MEXICO CITY (AP) — Hurricane Lidia made landfall as an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm Tuesday evening with winds of 140 mph near Mexico’s Pacific coast resort of Puerto Vallarta, and then moved inland, still as a powerful hurricane.
The U.S. 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 kilometers) east of the resort, and about 90 miles west of the capital of Jalisco state, Guadalajara.
Lidia remained a powerful hurricane even after moving over land, with winds of 105 mph late Tuesday. Jalisco and Nayarit states reported downed trees and power lines, as well as landslides over some highways in the region.
Lidia was moving east-northeast at about 17 mph, 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 the platform X an hour and a half after Lidia made landfall that the storm had generated “extraordinary rain and high surf” in various places, but that so far there were no reports of injuries or deaths.
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.
Lidia was expected to soak the region with heavy rain, and the hurricane center warned of possible flash flooding.
The center forecasts rainfall totals of 4 to 8 inches with localized totals of 12 inches possible in some places in the state of Nayarit, southern portions of the state of Sinaloa, and coastal areas of Jalisco.
Local authorities canceled classes in communities around the coast. The expected impact comes one day after Tropical Storm Max hit the southern Pacific coast, hundreds of miles away, and then dissipated. Rains from Max washed out part of a coastal highway in the southern state of Guerrero.
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