Hurricane Otis lashes Mexico after landfall near Acapulco

Hurricane Otis battered southern Mexico with devastating winds and flash flooding, after making landfall near the tourist hotspot of Acapulco with enough punch to destroy homes and uproot trees and power poles.

While weakening, the storm is still deadly. The hurricane is hitting the region with life-threatening storm surge and pelting southern Mexico’s Pacific coast with massive waves, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Otis is packing maximum sustained winds of 80 mph, making it a Category 1 storm, according to an advisory at 11 a.m. New York time.

“Damaging hurricane-force winds will spread inland over southern Mexico this morning with extremely destructive winds near the core during the next few hours,” it said. The storm’s center was located about 25 miles northwest of Acapulco.

Otis made landfall earlier Wednesday as a major Category 5 storm, the most severe on the Saffir-Simpson scale. As it approached, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador asked the residents of Guerrero state, where Acapulco is located, to move to shelters and said that a Navy security plan was in place.

“Remain in safe places, away from rivers, streams, ravines and be alert,” he said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The hurricane is hitting the region with life-threatening storm surge and pelting southern Mexico’s Pacific coast with massive waves, according to the NHC. While Otis is expected to rapidly weaken and dissipate later Wednesday, it could bring as much as 20 inches of rain in some areas through Thursday, accompanied by floods and mudslides.

The hurricane’s top winds increased by 80 miles per hour in just 12 hours as it neared the coast, the fastest rate ever recorded in the eastern Pacific since the satellite era began in 1966, Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said earlier in a social media post.

As climate change warms the world’s oceans, providing fuel for hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons, rapid intensification of storms is happening more often. Such developments are dangerous because it can take coastal residents and emergency officials by surprise when a storm has a huge burst of strength just before landfall.

In an earlier update on Tuesday, as the eye of Otis approached the coast, the NHC said: “There are no hurricanes on record even close to this intensity for this part of Mexico.”