Roxanne Losing Its Punch Downgraded To Tropical Storm; Still Lashing Mexican Coast

Downgraded from a hurricane, Tropical Storm Roxanne punished Mexico’s southern Gulf coast with torrential rains and surging tides Thursday, flooding small towns and wrecking crops.

Roxanne was the 10th hurricane of the busy Atlantic storm season when it roared over the Yucatan Peninsula this week with 110-mph winds. But even as it lost its punch, the threat of flash floods and mudslides rose.

Forecaster Bill Frederick at the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Roxanne remained a dangerous storm.

“The forecast is that it won’t be over open Gulf waters long enough to regain hurricane strength, but it will be very close,” said Frederick, speaking by telephone from Miami.

“Right now there are a lot of heavy showers and thunderstorms associated with Roxanne. They are contained in bands of storm clouds over the Yucatan peninsula and other portions of southern Mexico,” he added.

There have been no reports of deaths or injuries since Roxanne barreled ashore Tuesday evening off Mexico’s Yucatan Caribbean coast.

At its strongest, Roxanne batted down palm trees, shattered hotel windows in Cancun and left the Yucatan resort isle of Cozumel incommunicado for two days, stranding hundreds of tourists. Cozumel ferries began running again Thursday.

At 5 p.m. PDT, Roxanne was about 245 miles east-northeast of Veracruz, the National Weather Service in Miami report. Roxanne was nearly stationary but was expected to begin moving slowly westward in the next 24 hours.

Maximum sustained winds had dropped to 50 mph, but the hurricane center warned that some strengthening was possible and that tropical storm-force winds still extended 175 miles from the center.

A tropical storm warning and a hurricane watch were in effect all the way north to the Mexican port of Tampico, below the Texas border.

Many residents still struggling to recover from the ravages of Hurricane Opal last week face flash floods and mudslides. Battering waves and tide levels 4 to 6 feet above normal were expected to pound the Gulf coastline of Tabasco and Campeche states.

A flood watch was issued for portions of the Texas coast.

High winds knocked down trees and power lines on the Yucatan Peninsula on Wednesday night. People waded through waist-high water in Campeche, and two rivers in neighboring Tabasco state flooded.