11 months ago
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On Tuesday morning, there was no Hurricane Otis. Instead, there was just a tropical storm carrying winds of about 50 mph. Every single model used to predict the behavior of such storms called for Otis to remain a tropical storm. Instead, it blew up over a period of just nine hours, becoming a raging Category 5 hurricane that struck the coast of Mexico just south of Acapulco overnight with sustained winds of 165 mph.
Not only was the storm unprecedented in its behavior, it’s also by far the most powerful storm in this region going back over fifty years. The last severe storm to strike along this coast was a Category 2 storm in 1968, which remains one of the deadliest storms in Mexican history. Expectations are that nothing, absolutely nothing, in the region has been built to meet a storm like Otis.
At this hour (8 AM ET) Hurricane Otis has moved completely over land and top winds have slowed to 130 MPH. Power is out across the whole Acapulco area and information is sparse. Hope for the best, but expect a large and immediate need for international assistance as more than a million people face a nightmare scenario.
