MEXICO CITY --Residents along Mexico’s west coast stacked sandbags to fortify beachfront shops and evacuated their homes, while Hawaii’s Big Island and Maui braced for potentially catastrophic flooding, as two separate storms swirled in the Pacific on Thursday.
Heavy rains from powerful Hurricane Polo could cause life-threatening flooding and landslides in Mexico, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. In places like the port city of Lazaro Cardenas, seawater swept through homes Thursday and left wooden planks and furniture strewn on the streets.
Polo has gone back and forth between Category 4 and 5, both major-hurricane strength. The strongest winds were expected to remain offshore as the storm’s centre skirts the coast before moving out to sea. But Polo was forecast to hook back toward Mexico’s coast farther north on Saturday.
Far off the southern tip of Hawaii’s Big Island, Tropical Storm Nolo was gathering strength, and forecasters expect it to become a hurricane soon. Hawaii is likely to see heavy rains starting late Thursday and winds reaching hurricane levels by early Saturday. Nolo could dump more than two feet (60 centimetres) of rain across islands still recovering from a string of storms.
The series of powerful storms comes as the weather phenomenon El Nino prompts major environmental shifts across the world, fuelling drought in some areas and flooding in others. El Nino traditionally dampens the Atlantic hurricane season, while it tends to rev up tropical cyclone activity in the Pacific with moist air and little wind shear.
Hawaii has been battered this year by major flooding in the spring, an earthquake and two other hurricanes since mid-August.
“In my 20 years of experience here, I’ve never seen three hurricane watches for the islands in the same year,” said John Bravender of the National Weather Service in Honolulu.
Hurricane Polo could trigger flooding and mudslides in Mexico
Mexican authorities were opening shelters and clearing people from beaches, while coastal residents tried to protect businesses from getting swept away. People in high-risk areas were being evacuated, though authorities didn’t immediately say how many.
Much of the worry from locals comes from hurricanes in past years that devastated cities along the Pacific coast. Hurricane Otis in 2023 unexpectedly plunged Acapulco into turmoil for weeks.
“So many people said it wouldn’t happen and then it did. After that, you’re left on edge,” said Gonzalo Ramirez, a bartender in the city.
Polo posed the biggest threat to Guerrero and Michoacan, neighbouring states in southwest Mexico that share a long coastline scattered with small ports, tourist towns and fishing villages. Much of the area is marked by poverty, and residents routinely complain they are left to fend for themselves during natural disasters.
Mexican authorities have deployed 15,000 security personnel across the coast and suspended schools.
In Lazaro Cardenas, a port city in Michoacan that was hit with high surf, locals and government officials were clearing out piles of wooden planks from a number of destroyed ramadas and shoveling thick mud coating much of the town.
Alicia Contreras said the walls and roof of her restaurant had been severely damaged by 15-foot (4.5-metre) waves. As officers and family helped pick through the damaged house, Contreras worried how she would economically recover.
“This is huge because we have no other source of income. Now we’re just surviving,” Contreras said.
Nolo could hit Hawaii as a hurricane as soon as Friday
Forecasters said Tropical Storm Nolo might grow into a major hurricane and could drop 20 inches (50 centimetres) of rain on the Big Island, with even higher amounts possible through Saturday.
The island of Maui could also be hit with life-threatening floods and mudslides, the hurricane centre said.
While the Big Island is expected to bear the brunt of the storm, its full path remains uncertain, according to Bravender, the weather service’s warning co-ordination meteorologist in Hawaii.
Most concerning, he said Thursday, is that the heaviest rain is likely to fall over the same southeastern region of the Big Island hit in August by Hurricane Lala and where grounds are still wet from additional precipitation.
“There are several communities that were isolated, flooded, roads that were washed out,” he said. “It’s that same area that is most under threat,” Bravender said.
Hawaii officials told residents to put together emergency kits and the governor issued an emergency proclamation, activating more than 230 Hawaii National Guard members. Schools were closed for the rest of the week.
Hawaiian Electric, the state’s primary utility, said crews that had been helping restore power in Kauai after this month’s Hurricane Lowell would return to Oahu, Maui and the Big Island in preparation for the coming storm.
Odalys and Fay are not near land
A third storm in the Pacific, Hurricane Odalys, was centred far from land roughly 1,110 miles (1,785 kilometres) west-southwest of the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula.
In the northern Atlantic Ocean, Tropical Storm Fay re-formed early Thursday, the U.S. hurricane centre said. It was nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) west-southwest of the Azores.
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Megan Janetsky and Gabriela Aoun, The Associated Press
Aoun reported from San Diego. Associated Press writer Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.
