Hurricane Jimena roared toward Baja California yesterday as an extremely dangerous Category Five storm, Mexican officials said as they planned emergency evacuations for 20,000 families.
Jimena was packing winds of up to 250kph but was expected to weaken to a Category Four hurricane before making landfall in Baja California late yesterday or today, the National Weather Service said.
The center of the hurricane was 345km south of Cabo San Lucas as of early yesterday, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC), a US government agency that tracks and predicts storms.
US forecasters put Jimena at a Category Four on the one-to-five Saffir-Simpson scale, but noted that the storm was “very near the threshold of Category Five status.”
Hurricane Katrina was a Category Three storm when it struck Louisiana in 2005.
A hurricane warning remained in effect for the southern portion the Baja California peninsula, from Bahia Magdalena southward on the west coast, and from San Evaristo southward on the east coast, including popular tourist spot Cabo San Lucas. A hurricane watch was active elsewhere on the peninsula.
“Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion,” the NHC warned, urging interests throughout the peninsula and in the western Mexican mainland to monitor the hurricane’s progress.
With gusty winds and rains already hitting La Paz, the capital of the peninsula’s southern Baja California Sur state, residents were hastily boarding up windows and stockpiling goods as the most powerful hurricane of the year so far approached.
More than 1,000 foreign tourists fled Los Cabos, a resort town on the southern tip of Baja California, which was placed on high alert as emergency officials prepared contingency plans.
The local hotel association estimated that some 7,000 tourists would be evacuated before the storm was expected to make landfall on the resort-filled peninsula, which spears south from the US state of California into the Pacific. Los Cabos International Airport manager Martin Pablo Zazueta said the airport would be closed from early yesterday.
“I’m leaving Los Cabos, advancing my departure because I know a lot about hurricanes. I’m a Florida native and I know its effects,” Jesse Short said.
A defiant Gregory Smith, from New York, said: “Many Americans are leaving, but I’m going to stay here.”
Any evacuation plan would focus on densely populated areas and valleys at greatest risk of flooding, according to Los Cabos civil protection agency chief Francisco Cota.
“It will place special emphasis on the more than 20,000 families who live in high-risk areas,” he told journalists after a meeting of civil defense officials.
The threat of “severe damage” from the storm had the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development move a major international conference on tax transparency from Los Cabos to Mexico City.
US meteorologists said Jimena could produce up to 38cm of rainfall in isolated areas, and a total of between 13cm and 25cm over the southern half of the Baja California peninsula and parts of western Mexico yesterday and today.
The US State Department urged caution before risking travel to areas of Mexico and the US lying in the storm’s path.
“US citizens located in areas likely to be impacted by Hurricane Jimena and who do not have access to adequate and safe shelter should consider departing while commercial flights are still available,” it said in an alert.
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