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MEXICO CITY – Hurricane Kay made landfall today in northwestern Mexico before losing strength as it moved inland, bringing heavy rain to parts of the Baja California Peninsula, forecasters said.
Kay came ashore in a fairly sparsely populated area as a Category 1 hurricane – the lowest on a scale of five – and was later downgraded to a tropical storm.
At 8am today Kay was packing maximum sustained winds of 110km per hour and located about 48km east of Punta Eugenia, according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).
“Kay continues to bring very heavy rains to portions of the Baja California Peninsula,” it said.
Mexican authorities had earlier opened storm shelters and urged residents to take “extreme precautions” due to the danger of landslides and flooding.
Strong winds and heavy rain were also expected across parts of southern California and southwestern Arizona, NHC said.
Mexico is regularly lashed by tropical storms on both its Pacific and Atlantic coasts, generally between the months of May and November.
This year was the first since 1997 that no tropical cyclones formed in the North Atlantic, Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico in August, according to the NHC.
The deadliest storm to hit Mexico last year was a Category 3 hurricane called Grace that killed 11 people in the eastern states of Veracruz and Puebla in August. – AFP, September 9, 2022