Hurricane Simon lashes Mexico
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PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico -- Hurricane Simon pounded Mexico's Pacific coast as a Category 3 storm on Sunday, its eye remaining just offshore as its most powerful winds and rain slammed people living between the Sierra Madre and the ocean.
The hurricane's center swirled parallel to the coast, closing in on the Puerto Vallarta area, where its most damaging winds and rain were expected to hit around midnight and continue through Monday morning. Its maximum sustained winds weakened Sunday to 125 mph, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami, but it was still expected to remain a dangerous hurricane.
That's not good news for people in and around Puerto Vallarta, a popular tourist destination in the state of Jalisco. Just inland and uphill from the resort areas, many Mexicans live in communities where housing might not stand up to the storm.
By Sunday afternoon, Simon's eye was moving northwest about 50 miles south of Cabo Corrientes at about 5 mph. A senior hurricane center specialist, Phillipe Pappin, said this westernmost tip of mainland Mexico is the area most likely to get a direct hit from the system. Cabo Corrientes is at the southern tip of Bahia de Banderas, the wide bay where Puerto Vallarta looks out to the Pacific.
Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 25 miles, and tropical-storm-force winds reach up to 60 miles from Simon's center, meaning the entire area between Mexico's western coast and the Sierra Madre mountains could be affected.
"We're expecting catastrophic wind and life-threatening storm surge impacts along that west-central coast of Mexico where the hurricane warning is currently in effect," Pappin said. "They're also getting very heavy rainfall associated with the storm that's likely going to produce life-threatening flooding and mudslides in areas of higher terrain along the Mexican coastline, and there will be significant swells."
The hurricane center on Sunday said Simon was expected to dump an additional 2 to 4 inches of rain, with some areas getting up to 8 inches, in the states of Colima, Jalisco, Nayarit and Sinaloa through early Thursday.