Hurricane Polo roared to Category 5 strength on Tuesday in the eastern Pacific Ocean, just off Mexico’s southwestern coast, the National Hurricane Center in Miami reported. The storm packed maximum sustained winds of 160 mph (about 257 km/h) — well above the 157 mph (252 km/h) threshold that defines the top hurricane category.
Polo was crawling eastward at roughly 6 mph (10 km/h) and was forecast to make a sharp turn toward the northwest, tracking parallel to the Mexican coastline for several days without coming ashore. Even so, forecasters warned of torrential rain, flooding and mudslides through Thursday in the coastal states of Guerrero and Michoacán, with lighter rainfall possible in Oaxaca, Colima and Jalisco. A tropical storm warning was issued for the shoreline between Manzanillo, in Colima, and Tecpan de Galeana, in Guerrero. By late Monday, Polo sat about 330 miles (530 km) south-southeast of Manzanillo.
Farther out in the Pacific, Tropical Storm Odalys, with 50 mph (80 km/h) winds, was expected to strengthen into a hurricane by midweek. Meanwhile, in the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Fay weakened to 40 mph (65 km/h) winds near the Azores. Notably, no hurricane has yet formed in the Atlantic this year — a record stretch scientists attribute to El Niño suppressing storm development.
You can read the original report from Telemundo for more details.
Source: El huracán Polo se fortalece a categoría 5 en el Pacífico, frente a las costas de México (telemundo.com).
Image: NASA Goddard Photo and Video, BY 2.0 (via Openverse).