Hurricane Olaf made landfall on the Pacific coast of Mexico in the early hours of Friday near San José del Cabo, in southern Baja California, before weakening slightly from category 2 to 1, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) announced. Olaf has reached this very touristy coast, where the popular resort of Los Cabos is located, with winds blowing at 155 km / h.
Despite its slight weakening when entering land, it continued this Friday morning to envelop the region in winds of up to 150 km / h and torrential rains. At 6 a.m. it was about 55 km from Cabo San Lucas and 75 km northwest of La Paz, another popular tourist resort, and was moving up the coast. The cloud bands “cause occasional torrential rains of 150 to 250 millimeters in Baja California Sur,” warned the Mexican National Meteorological Service (SMN).
Mexico regularly visited by hurricanes
Due to the risk of flooding, the authorities evacuated a public hospital in Los Cabos, the state civil protection said. On Tuesday, heavy rains in the center of the country flooded a hospital in Hidalgo, causing the death of 14 Covid patients deprived of assisted ventilation. The ports on the coast were closed to navigation this Friday morning and the airports of Los Cabos and La Paz stopped, as were schools.
Due to its geographic location, Mexico is sensitive to the impact of hurricanes. At the end of August, Hurricane Nora left one dead and one missing in the Mexican state of Jalisco, on the Pacific coast. Also in August, Category 3 Hurricane Grace, which made landfall in the Veracruz region, on the Atlantic side, killed 11 people.