A strengthening hurricane in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico’s coast has forecasters on high alert. They warned Tuesday afternoon that the storm could bring further flooding to Southern California’s already battered coastline.
The Category 5 storm, known as Hurricane Polo, is expected to remain “extremely dangerous” for the next few days, according to the National Hurricane Center’s advisory on Tuesday afternoon. It is moving northwestward.
After rapidly intensifying, Polo was still strengthening into the afternoon, the center said.
The storm is expected to remain in a “very conductive environment” over the next few days because of low wind, extremely warm ocean waters, and abundant moisture, the center said, adding, “Therefore even more strengthening is possible.”
Maximum winds with the storm were blasting at 180 mph, the center said.
Forecasters expect Polo to bring heavy rainfall to coastal portions of southwestern Mexico through Thursday. They warned that the area could see life-threatening flooding and mudslides, particularly in steep terrain. The center has announced tropical storm warnings for portions of southwestern Mexico.
Effects in Southern California will be much less drastic, according to forecasters.
Polo could pull tropical moisture into the region, depending on patterns in the upper levels of the atmosphere, Bryan Lewis, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard, said Monday.
Lewis said on Tuesday afternoon that there was a 5% chance of rain in Los Angeles County, depending on the hurricane’s path. The bigger concern, he said, is that high surf and high tides will coincide next Monday and Tuesday, which could lead to potential coastal flooding.
Previous Pacific storms, most recently Hurricane Marie, have blanketed the region in unusually warm, humid air more reminiscent of the South.
And “after almost an entire summer of southern swell after southern swell, there could be some issues for those vulnerable coastlines,” he told The Times Monday.
Polo is the 16th named storm to form in the eastern Pacific this year.
Already this year, multiple counties and towns have declared local emergencies as a spell of powerful tropical storms from the Pacific generated high surf that eroded local beaches.
Those include Laguna Beach, Dana Point and Carlsbad, which cited coastal erosion and sand loss.
El Niño typically results in an unusually active hurricane season in the eastern Pacific and heavy winter rainfall in Southern California, and this El Niño is predicted to be the strongest in at least a generation.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a statewide emergency in anticipation of this winter’s storms, citing fears the weather pattern could bring high surf and high-impact storms to the state.
Times staff writer Grace Toohey contributed to this report.
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