MEXICO CITY –
The strongest hurricane on record, making landfall in the eastern Pacific in May, devastated a stretch of tourist beaches and fishing villages in southern Mexico on Monday.
Torrential rains and howling winds from Hurricane Agatha hit palm trees and took tourists and residents to shelters in a sparsely populated region, except for a handful of small communities along the coast.
The Oaxaca State Civil Protection Agency showed families approaching a shelter in Pochutla and a rock and mud slide that blocked the road between that city and the state capital.
Agatha made landfall about 5 miles (10 km) west of Puerto Angel as a strong Category 2 storm, with sustained maximum wingspans of 105 mph (165 km / h). It was moving northeast at 8 mph (13 mph).
Near Puerto Angel, gusts of wind, heavy rain and big waves began to hit the beach town of Zipolite, long known for its beach with optional clothing and bohemian atmosphere.
“There is a lot of rain and sudden gusts of strong wind,” said Silvia Ranfagni, manager of Zipolite’s Casa Kalmar Hotel. “The ocean is very choppy and it rains a lot,” said Ranfagni, who has decided to go out with Agatha on the property. “You can hear the howling wind.”
National emergency officials said they had assembled a working group of more than 9,300 people for the area and that more than 200 shelters had been opened, as meteorologists warned of dangerous storm surges and flooding due to heavy rains. .
In the surf town of Puerto Escondido, in the west, people took refuge and finished putting plywood to prevent the windows from breaking with the strong wind.
After training on Sunday, Agatha quickly gained power and made landfall as a strong Category 2 hurricane on Monday afternoon, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Agatha is the strongest recorded hurricane to make landfall in the eastern Pacific in May, said Jeff Masters, a Yale Climate Connections meteorologist and founder of Weather Underground.
He said hurricanes in the region usually start from tropical waves reaching the coast of Africa.
“Because the African monsoon does not normally begin to produce tropical waves until early or mid-May, there are simply not enough initial disturbances to reach many East Pacific hurricanes in May,” Masters wrote in an email. “Also, May’s water temperatures are cooler than at the peak of the season, and the wind shear is usually higher.”
Masters wasn’t sure if the Agatha was driven by a tropical wave, low-pressure areas moving through the tropics, but the storm benefited from the warm water and wind shear.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the storm was expected to drop 10 to 16 inches (250 to 400 millimeters) of rain in parts of Oaxaca, with isolated highs of 20 inches (500 millimeters). ), which poses the threat of sudden floods and mudslides.
In Huatulco, the municipal authorities had canceled the schools and ordered the “absolute closure” of all the beaches and their seven bays, many of which can only be accessed by boat.
The government’s Mexican Turtle Center, a former slaughterhouse that has been turned into a conservation center in Mazunte, announced it was closed to visitors until further notice due to the hurricane.