It may be turning colder in parts of the country, but it’s still hurricane season, and the latest Pacific storm brought a strong reminder of that to Baja California over the weekend.
While in the open ocean, Hurricane Rick had whipped itself into a Category 5, the most powerful classification of storm (here’s a NASA image from Oct. 18). Its 180 mph winds were the fastest recorded in a Pacific storm for a decade, The New York Times reported, and it sent powerful waves up and down the Mexican coasts that killed two people. However, it lost force as it closed in and by the time it made landfall around Mazatlan, it was a weaker Category 1 storm and lost even more punch as it headed inland, dumping as much as six inches of rain along its path.
Further out in the Pacific, past Hawaii, was Hurricane Neki with 105 mph winds, but it was not expected to come into contact with inhabited islands as of the middle of the week.
And an expatriate American woman living in northern Honduras reported heavy flooding after 11 inches of rain fell in 24 hours early this week. On her blog, La Gringa’s Blogicito, she reported crop damage, landslides and fallen trees, and she included a clip from the local newscast covering the damage.