Hurricane Otis slams Mexico's southern coast

MEXICO CITY (CN) — The Mexican Pacific coast resort town of Acapulco is incommunicado after the strongest hurricane to ever hit the region struck the coast as a Category 5 storm late Tuesday night.

Originally classified as a low-intensity tropical storm, Otis rapidly strengthened to a “potentially catastrophic Category 5” storm in less than 24 hours, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

“There are no hurricanes on record even close to this intensity for this part of Mexico,” said the center, which called the storm a “nightmare scenario.”

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at his daily morning press conference Wednesday that no deaths had yet been reported, but that his administration did not have lines of communication with the Acapulco area.

“The hurricane hit the coast hard,” he said. “Communication is completely down.”

The natural disaster response teams of Mexico’s armed forces had been deployed to the region, he said.

Otis had been downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane by Wednesday morning, but it was forecast to make landfall with sustained winds of over 165 mph and gusts of over 205 mph at around midnight Tuesday, according to Mexico’s National Meteorological Service.

The National Hurricane Center also warned that Otis’ storm surge would cause “life-threatening coastal flooding” to the area where it made landfall and that its rains would spur flash and urban flooding and mudslides in Guerrero’s mountainous terrain.

Videos posted to social media showed harrowing scenes of tourists stranded in high-rise hotels and patients huddling in hospital corridors attempting to shelter from the intense winds and rain.

Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission reported that over 300,000 users in the state of Guerrero remained without power on Wednesday morning. It dispatched over 845 electricians to tackle the connectivity issues.

The National Civil Protection agency kept Guerrero and neighboring Oaxaca on high alert Wednesday morning, recommending people evacuate high-risk areas and disconnect electronics and gas lines as the storm made its way inland toward the states of Michoacán and Jalisco.

Otis’ rapid intensification was almost unprecedented: The only other hurricane to strengthen more quickly in modern times was Patricia in 2015, according to Mexico’s hurricane center.

The speed shocked hurricane researchers, who said that the storm defied all predictive models.

“Not too many storms are this unpredictable,” University of Miami climatologist Brian McNoldy said on X, formerly Twitter. “None of the models saw this coming either.”

Otis’ timing could have something to do with that rapid intensification, McNoldy said. In another post, he noted how Patricia and a similarly fast-developing storm named Wilma in 2005 both occurred in late October.

Intense rains and winds will keep Central and Southern Mexico on alert throughout the day. The hurricane center said the storm will continue to impact the area through Thursday.

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