Shops shut by official order, shelters open, and not a single commercial flight leaving Manzanillo: Mexico’s west coast is bracing for a storm that kept gaining strength through Saturday.
By late Saturday evening local time, Hurricane Simon was packing sustained winds close to 250 km/h (155 mph), a hair below the Category 5 threshold, according to the US National Hurricane Center. Hurricane hunters had earlier flown into the system and found a central pressure in the low 930s; the latest estimate dropped to 928 millibars. Its eye sat roughly 105 kilometres from Manzanillo, with the dangerous inner core already closing in on land. Mexico’s civil protection service expected the centre to come ashore on Sunday somewhere between La Huerta and Tomatlán in Jalisco.
What makes Simon tricky is its angle. The storm is crawling north almost parallel to the shoreline, so a small wobble could mean the difference between a direct strike and a near miss that keeps hurricane-force winds lashing the coast for longer. Forecasters agree on one thing: the rain. Totals of 250 to 500 mm are possible, and some slopes in Michoacán, Colima and Jalisco could see up to 750 mm, enough to trigger flash floods and landslides in the mountains behind the beaches.
Officials did not wait. Civil protection chief Laura Velázquez halted non-essential activity in 23 municipalities across four states, and residents of several coastal towns were told to stay indoors from Saturday afternoon or head to shelters. President Claudia Sheinbaum sent word that no one would be left alone. Command posts were set up in Puerto Vallarta, Cihuatlán and Manzanillo, and airlines including Volaris suspended flights to several regional airports.
Simon caps a remarkably busy stretch for forecasters: Isaias struck Florida on Friday, and the remnants of Rachel were heading ashore farther north, close to the US border.
