Officials evacuated about 50 people from low-lying areas in the western Mexican resort city of Cabo San Lucas on Friday as newly formed Hurricane Otis swept toward a sparsely populated stretch of Baja California.
Mayor Luis Armando Diaz led a contingent of police officers going door to door and asking residents to leave the outskirts of Cabo San Lucas, where many poor families live in flimsy shacks.
Only a few dozen people had left their homes, but authorities hoped to move out as many as 1 000 by late evening. Five shelters were opened to accommodate evacuees.
Otis had maximum sustained winds of about 140kph late on Friday and was about 195km south-west of the nearby city of Los Cabos, at the tip of the peninsula, according to the United States National Hurricane Centre.
The storm was still growing and the centre said Otis could become a category-two hurricane with winds of 154kph or above by Saturday.
Extended forecasts expect a weakened Otis to bring rain to parts of the south-western US by early next week.
Otis is not expected to hit Cabo San Lucas directly, but rains and winds from the storm’s outer bands are battering the coastline.
The resort’s port was closed on Friday, but the airport remained open. Few visitors chose to leave the area as Otis approached, officials said.
The streets of Cabo San Lucas were mostly deserted, but groups of tourists could still be found braving intermittent rain.
The storm is moving at 13kph toward a sparsely populated central section of the Baja peninsula and is expected to hit land by Monday. The center cautioned that any lurch to the east could bring the eye of the storm near land by late Friday.
The hurricane centre said the storm’s outer bands could bring 5cm to 10cm of rain over the southern end of the peninsula by late Friday.
Otis is the 15th Pacific storm of the season. Pacific storms, like those in the Atlantic, are given names that correspond to the alphabet, starting with the letter A.
Typhoon warning
Meanwhile, Taiwan on Saturday issued a sea and land warning for Typhoon Longwang, which is approaching Taiwan from the Pacific Ocean.
By 7am local time, the centre of Longwang (meaning ”dragon king”) was 630km south-east of Hualian on Taiwan’s east coast, the Central Weather Bureau said.
Moving at 25kph, Longwang packs centre winds of 184kph and gusts of 227kph.
”The edge of the typhoon circle will affect east and north-east Taiwan on Saturday evening and could make a landfall on Taiwan late on Sunday or early Monday,” the weatherman said.
The Central Weather Bureau defined Longwang, which has a radius of 200km, as a powerful typhoon and warned that it could cause severe damage if it hits Taiwan. — Sapa-AP, Sapa-DPA