Hurricane Manuel Goes Ashore in Mexico With More Rain

Bernandino Hernandez/AP Photo

A car lies on its side after a portion of a hill collapsed due to heavy rains in the Pacific resort city of Acapulco, Mexico, on Sept. 15, 2013.

Manuel weakened from a hurricane to a tropical storm after going ashore on Mexico’s Pacific coast as the country fights to recover from a week’s worth of storms that have left at least 81 dead and 58 missing.

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People affected by Hurricanes Ingrid and Manuel in Acapulco mill around a shelter in Acapulco, Mexico on Sept. 18, 2013. Photographer: Nimrod Cruces Avila/LatinContent via Getty Images

The system made landfall west of Culiacan in the state of Sinaloa. It was 40 miles (65 kilometers) north-northeast of Altata with top sustained winds of 65 miles per hour as of 1 p.m. New York time, moving north-northeast at 3 mph, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

“Weakening will continue during the next day or so, and Manuel is forecast to weaken to a tropical depression tonight,” Daniel Brown, a warning coordination meteorologist at the center in Miami, said in an advisory. “The cyclone is forecast to dissipate over the mountainous terrain of Mexico by Friday night.”

It was the second direct hit by the storm, which struck the country farther south over the weekend and may bring 8 to 12 inches (20 to 30 centimeters) of rain across western Mexico. Rain from Manuel’s first blow and from Hurricane Ingrid has been blamed for deadly floods and landslides that drove 40,000 people from their homes and stranded 40,000 more in Acapulco, according to the nation’s interior ministry.

Fifty-eight people were missing after a landslide hit a coffee-growing village in the southern town of Atoyac.

“It seems like Mexico can’t get a break from the rain this year,” said Dan Kottlowski, a meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania.

Heavy Rain

As Manuel moves into central Mexico, its moisture will be wrung out in the mountains, Kottlowski said. Isolated areas may receive 20 inches, according to the hurricane center.

What is left will be drawn into a cold front that is expected to sweep across Texas and may send heavy rain into the U.S. South over the weekend, Kottlowski said.

As Manuel begins to break up in the mountains, another tropical system may take shape in the Bay of Campeche, in the southern Gulf of Mexico. An area of disturbed weather there has a 60 percent chance of becoming tropical in the next five days, according to the hurricane center.

The Bay of Campeche is where Petroleos Mexicanos, Mexico’s state-owned oil company known as Pemex, has its two largest oil fields, which produce about 1.25 million barrels a day.

“The main impacts of this system is it’s going to generate very heavy rainfall in those areas that got hit with very heavy rainfall with Ingrid,” Kottlowski said.

Other Systems

Kottlowski said the system will probably become a tropical depression later today. If it becomes Tropical Storm Jerry, it would be the Atlantic hurricane season’s 10th named storm.

Forecasters are also tracking what’s left of Hurricane Humberto, now a tropical depression 985 miles west-southwest of the Azores with top sustained winds of 35 mph. It isn’t an immediate threat to land.

A disturbance between Bermuda and the Bahamas has a 20 percent chance of development in the next five days as it moves northeastward, the center said. Kottlowski said it probably won’t be a threat to land even if it strengthens.