Hurricane Lidia pummelled the coast of Mexico on Tuesday night, leaving one dead as it made landfall as an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm.
The hurricane smashed into Mexico’s Pacific coast resort of Puerto Vallarta with winds of 140 mph (220 kph), before moving inland, still as a powerful hurricane.
The US National Hurricane Center said Lidia’s eye appeared to have reached land near Las Penitas in the western state of Jalisco. The area is a sparsely populated peninsula.
The hurricane then moved south of Puerto Vallarta to a point inland about 30 miles (50 kilometres) east of the resort, and about 90 miles (150 kms) west of the capital of Jalisco state, Guadalajara.
As it moved over land with winds still 105 mph (165 kph) late into Tuesday, the state of Nayarit reported its first human casualty.
The Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Jorge Benito Rodríguez, confirmed that a man died when a tree fell on his car while driving on the highway that goes from La Cruz de Huanacaxtle to Punta de Mita.
In addition, several landslides have been reported on federal highway 200 that runs along the coast, which is why some sections remain closed in the municipality of Bahía de Banderas.
In the municipality of Autlán de Navarro, Jalisco, four streams overflowed, causing damage to homes and businesses.
Meanwhile, the governor of Nayarit, Miguel Ángel Navarro, indicated that classes will remain suspended in all schools in the state throughout the week due to the damage that the hurricane is expected to cause.
Hurricane Lidia has now been downgraded to Category 2 but experts have warned the public not to underestimate it.
The effects of the hurricane will cause extraordinary rains in Colima, Jalisco and Nayarit; torrential rains in Michoacán and western Guerrero; intense in Durango and Sinaloa, and very strong in Aguascalientes, Guanajuato and Zacatecas, they warn.
Conagua also reported that there will be gusts of intense wind, which will cause high waves of seven to nine meters on the coasts of Jalisco and Nayarit; from five to seven meters on the Sinaloa coast; of four to six meters on the coasts of Colima and Michoacán and finally waves of two to four meters on the coasts of Baja California Sur and Guerrero.
For its part, the National Civil Protection Coordination reported that the rains caused by the hurricane are dangerous, so they called not to underestimate them and wait for the water to subside.
“Due to the above, the SMN, in coordination with the National Hurricane Center in Miami, USA, establishes a prevention zone for hurricane effects from Manzanillo, Colima, to San Blas, Nayarit, and a prevention zone for hurricane effects and tropical storm from Manzanillo, Colima, to Punta San Telmo, Michoacán.”
Lidia was moving east-northeast at about 17 mph (28 kph), and forecasters predicted it could still be a Category 1 hurricane when it brushed by Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, around midnight.
Jalisco Gov. Enrique Alfaro said via platform X (formerly known as Twitter) an hour and a half after Lidia made landfall that the storm had generated “extraordinary rain and high surf” in various places, but there were no reports of injuries or deaths so far.
The state had 23 shelters open, he said. The Puerto Vallarta city government said a few dozen people had gone to shelters there.
In 2015, Hurricane Patricia, a Category 5 hurricane, also made landfall on the same sparsely-populated stretch of coastline between the resort of Puerto Vallarta and the major port of Manzanillo.
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