Hurricane Polo, an extremely powerful Category 4 storm, swirls off Mexico's Pacific coast. See its path.
Hurricane Polo, an extremely powerful Category 4 storm, continued to swirl off Mexico's southwestern coast on Wednesday but was only expected to skirt the Pacific shoreline over the next few days, not make landfall, as it continues along its path.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Polo's maximum sustained winds decreased to 145 mph Wednesday afternoon, after the storm rapidly intensified a day earlier. On Tuesday, Polo's wind speeds climbed as high as 180 mph, far exceeding the 157 mph threshold for Category 5, which is the strongest on the hurricane scale.
The storm is expected to fluctuate in intensity over the next few days, forecasters said, but remain a "very powerful major hurricane."
Maps show Hurricane Polo's path
As of Wednesday afternoon local time, Polo was located about 150 miles off the coast of Zihuatanejo, a coastal resort city in the Mexican state of Guerrero. Polo's outer rain bands were impacting portions of the coast, the hurricane center said.
It hurled hurricane-force winds outward up to 40 miles from its center and tropical storm-force winds some 105 miles out. After remaining stationary for several hours, Polo began to slowly travel northwestward on Wednesday, inching along at 7 mph.
Polo was forecast to bring tropical storm conditions to parts of the coastline starting Wednesday. In some areas, heavy rainfall "may produce life-threatening flooding and mudslides, especially in areas of steep terrain," the hurricane center warned.
The storm remains far south of Mexico's Baja California peninsula, but the longer-term forecast indicates it could turn in that direction early next week.
It is forecast to to move northwest through the weekend. Polo's core is expected to remain near the southwestern Mexican coast through Thursday morning, before it moves farther out to sea, the hurricane center said.
The Mexican government issued a tropical storm warning for a stretch of the Mexican coast from Tecpan de Galeana, in Guerrero, to Punta San Telmo, in Michoacán. A tropical storm watch was in effect from Punta San Telmo to Playa Perula, in the state of Jalisco. Tropical storm warnings are issued when forecasts indicate tropical storm conditions will develop in a particular area, while tropical storm watches are issued when those conditions are possible, but not imminent.
In this case, the hurricane center said people under a tropical storm warning should expect those conditions to take shape on Wednesday. For those in the watch area, such conditions could develop by Thursday.
Parts of Guerrero and Michoacán may receive between 3 and 6 inches of rainfall as Polo barrels past, with up to 8 inches possible in certain spots, through Thursday. Between 2 and 4 inches of rain could also fall in coastal parts of the states of Oaxaca, Colima and Jalisco through Thursday, forecasters said.
Along with rain, Polo was also expected to cause life-threatening surf conditions, including rip currents, along the southwestern Mexican coast. The surf conditions could also contribute to flooding.
Polo's extreme rapid intensification
Polo underwent what's called extreme rapid intensification, in which a storm's wind speeds increase by 58 mph or more over the course of 24 hours, between Monday and Tuesday. Its intensification was dramatic even by those standards, with winds that skyrocketed from 45 mph early Monday morning to 150 mph at around the same time the following day. The hurricane center described its transformation as "truly remarkable."
Behind 2015's Hurricane Patricia, Polo's central pressure (an indicator of its strength and potential destructiveness) made it the second-strongest hurricane on record in the Eastern Pacific. The storm's wind speeds tied 2009's Hurricane Rick as the third-strongest on record for the region.
Unusually strong El Niño conditions this year have been amping up tropical cyclone activity in the Pacific, with warmer waters, moist air and less wind shear enabling storm formation.
