Powerful Hurricane Hits Mexico’s Pacific
A hurricane described as “extremely dangerous” has made landfall on Mexico’s pacific coast.
Hurricane Lidia hit Mexico as a category 4 storm, bringing wind speeds of up to 220 kilometers per hour.
Lidia made landfall by the small beach town of Las Penitas just before 18:00 local time.
Ahead of the storm, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that 6,000 members of the armed forces had been deployed to help residents.
In the seaside resort of Puerto Vallarta, residents took shelter from the storm, with shopkeepers boarding up windows and piling up sandbags in case of flooding.
Parts of Mexico’s Pacific coastline have already seen significant flooding this week after Tropical Storm Max hit. Local media reports that two people died as a result of the storm in the state of Guerrero.
Read Also:
Hurricanes hit Mexico every year on both its Pacific and Atlantic coasts. The country’s official hurricane season runs from May to November, with most storms developing between July and October.
The impact of climate change on the frequency of storms is still unclear, but scientists say that increased sea surface temperatures warm the air above and make more energy available to drive hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons.
As a result, they are likely to be more intense with more extreme rainfall.
The world has already warmed by about 1.1C since the industrial era began and temperatures will keep rising unless governments around the world make steep cuts to emissions.