The Pacific is throwing two punches at once. Hurricane Trudy lashed Mexico’s Pacific coast with heavy rain and strong winds on Sunday as the US National Hurricane Center warned of life-threatening flooding and mudslides — while, thousands of miles to the west, Typhoon Champi roared past Guam as a Category 4 super typhoon, prompting President Donald Trump to approve an emergency disaster declaration for the American territory on Saturday.
Trudy, a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds near 100mph, was hugging the coastline on Sunday morning, sitting about 135 miles south-southwest of Cabo Corrientes in Jalisco and moving northwest at around 10mph. A hurricane warning stretched from Manzanillo in Colima to Cabo Corrientes. Forecasters expected the centre to remain near the coast through Sunday evening before turning south of the Baja California peninsula. The greater danger, officials stressed, is water, not wind: Trudy was expected to dump 4 to 8 inches of rain through the weekend, with isolated totals near 12 inches across Michoacán, Colima and Jalisco — on ground already saturated by successive storms. The Mexican Navy urged mariners and coastal residents to exercise extreme caution over high waves, rising rivers and landslides.
Guam braces for the second punch
Champi passed close to Guam’s southern tip with sustained winds of 150mph, and late on Sunday was 200 miles west of the island, moving west at 14mph. Forecasters said it could strengthen into a Category 5 super typhoon early on Monday. Guam and Rota remained under a typhoon warning; airports, harbours and some health facilities were closed, and FEMA said resources were unlikely to reach the islands for three to five days. The territory is still recovering from super typhoons Sinlaku and Bavi, which struck in April and July. Trump’s emergency declaration authorises FEMA to coordinate all federal disaster relief efforts for Guam.
A season that will not let go
The twin storms underline how crowded this Pacific season has become: while Trudy soaks Mexico’s coast, Tropical Storm Simon lingers farther northwest offshore after dropping heavy rain as a hurricane, and is forecast to graze the Baja California peninsula. For emergency managers, the lesson of the weekend is that the category number tells only part of the story — saturated hillsides in Colima and a battered Guam face serious danger from systems that never needed to make a textbook landfall to do harm.
