MEXICO CITY — Javier Soto and his neighbors had just begun cleaning up flood and mudslide damage from the last hurricane when another major storm began brewing in the Pacific Ocean, once again threatening their community north of Puerto Vallarta.
“We get through one storm only to face another,” said Soto, 39, a travel agent in the beach town of Bahía de Banderas, where it has been raining for weeks straight. “It feels like a tunnel with no exit in sight.”
A record-shattering hurricane season in the eastern Pacific has been battering Mexico’s Pacific coast, bringing death and destruction to states including Guerrero, Jalisco, Nayarit, Colima and Baja California.
Ten hurricanes have formed in the eastern Pacific so far this year, the most since 2018. And more are predicted.
Meteorologists say a powerful El Niño and warmer ocean temperatures caused by climate change have super
Residents clean mud and debris from their flooded homes after severe damage caused by Tropical Storm Rachel in Ensenada, Baja California, on Oct. 15.
(Omar Martinez / Anadolu via Getty Images)
charged the storms, which have lasted longer than usual and have sustained stronger winds than is typical.
The latest storm is Trudy, a Category 1 hurricane that was expected to pass Mexico’s southwestern coast on Sunday. Authorities from Guerrero to Nayarit warned that Trudy could strengthen, and said heavy rainfall could cause major damage because the ground is already saturated from previous storms.
Residents on Mexico’s Pacific coastline are accustomed to powerful hurricanes.
But many say this year feels different because long-lasting storms have hit in quick succession, giving residents little chance to clean up and dry out.
“You haven’t even recovered from one storm when the next one arrives,” said Ricardo Trejo, 43, a restaurant manager in Acapulco. The famed resort town was hit by Hurricane Polo in late September and again by Hurricane Simon days later.
As Trudy approached this week, Trejo and his staff found themselves once again boarding up their seaside cafe — while bracing themselves for lost income and potential damage.
“Every hurricane leaves behind disaster and financial loss,” Trejo said. “Tourism drops, work is lost, families suffer, kids miss school.”
The Baja California Peninsula has also been battered by a series of powerful storms — first Polo and then Rachel. Authorities said eight people were killed in Ensenada, a beach town just south of the U.S. border.
Residents there say roads and beaches are still badly damaged, and that more government support is needed.
“We are asking the government to declare a disaster zone so that more financial resources will arrive,” said Gerardo Gutiérrez, 56. “We neighbors are cleaning everything by ourselves.”
Men survey a road damaged by a swollen river along the road to Las Barrancas, in Baja California Sur state, on Sept. 29 in the aftermath of Hurricane Polo.
(Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press)
Roberto Flores, a 53-year-old shop owner in Loreto, an even more remote town on the Baja Peninsula, said locals were also waiting for more help from federal authorities.
“We survive here because we help one another — neighbors helping neighbors,” Flores said. “Were it not for that, we would be completely abandoned.”
Flores and others said they were unnerved by this year’s storm season, and worried that it was a consequence of humans throwing the natural world out of balance.
“Those of us who live here know that hurricanes are normal, but what isn’t normal is having them one after another without a break, and all of them severe,” he said.
In 2023, Mexico’s Pacific coast was hit by its most powerful storm on record, Otis, which slammed into Acapulco as a Category 5 hurricane after strengthening rapidly. Meteorologists blamed its rapid growth on unseasonably warm ocean temperatures triggered by El Niño and human-caused climate change. Dozens of people were killed and Acapulco suffered billions of dollars in damage.
Graciela Ramírez, a 49-year-old cook in Puerto Vallarta, said she worried that powerful storms were the new normal.
Her working-class neighborhood was badly damaged in earlier storms this year — with homes flooded and landslides wiping out streets.
Now she and her family were packing their bags to go to a shelter to wait out Trudy.
“Here we go again, she said. “We’re left without work, living in fear that the hurricane might strike with full force and we could lose everything.”
Linthicum reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Sánchez from Mexico City.