Hurricane Lidia makes landfall in western Mexico, with long-term effects for the Gulf Coast

AccuWeather

Lidia made landfall as a powerful Category 4 hurricane on Oct. 10, bringing extreme risk to parts of western Mexico. But its effects will stretch well into the U.S.

Transcript

00:00 Folks, we have a Category 4 hurricane making landfall right now on the west coast of Mexico,

00:06 right north of Puerto Vallarta.

00:09 Here's Cabo San Lucas for a frame of reference here.

00:12 And Mexico runs all the way across here to the Gulf of Mexico.

00:15 So it is the west coast of Mexico right now where this storm is making landfall.

00:20 And I'll tell you what here, folks, we're going to jump across Mexico into the Gulf

00:24 of Mexico because this is an area that we're going to be watching here, really over the

00:28 next 24 hours, for the potential of a tropical system to develop in our neck of the woods

00:34 here in the Atlantic side of things.

00:36 Now what's going to happen is the chance is medium, so it may or may not become a tropical

00:41 depression or worse over the next 24 hours, but it's the moisture that's coming across

00:46 from Hurricane Lydia will aid in heavy rain over the Gulf Coast over the next couple of

00:52 days.

00:53 Now we'll take a view here of the infrared satellite picture, and you can see Lydia.

00:57 I mean, it's very impressive.

00:58 It's a major hurricane.

01:00 The gusts with Lydia could be over 150 miles an hour, literally as we speak, on land.

01:06 They're looking for 16 inches of rain, a storm surge up to 10 feet on the west coast of Mexico

01:13 there.

01:14 But as we turn our attention here to the Gulf of Mexico, here's the area of concern, which

01:18 has a medium chance of development.

01:19 There's an area of low pressure there.

01:21 It will drift north, and it may organize as we head into tonight and tomorrow, but there'll

01:26 be some wind shear that it encounters as it heads north, so the chances appear to be going

01:30 down a bit as far as it becoming a named storm.

01:33 There's a look at Hurricane Lydia.

01:35 The winds right now are 140 miles an hour near its center.

01:38 Check out the pressure, 942 millibars.

01:41 This thing is a powerful storm, northeast, moving to the northeast at 16 miles an hour.

01:47 And as it makes landfall this evening as a Category 4 storm, it's actually the first

01:51 hurricane to make landfall in Mexico this season, and it will rapidly lose its wind

01:56 intensity, but, boy, it's going to dump rain up to 16 inches of it.

02:00 Look at the wind gust forecast here, folks.

02:02 Here's Puerto Vallarta, a pretty major port city in Mexico.

02:05 We're looking at winds that could get over 160 miles an hour.

02:10 The accurate local storm max is 170, so that is formidable.

02:14 And the rainfall forecast through Wednesday, you see a large area of 4 to 8 inches, an

02:19 accurate local storm max of 16 inches there.

02:22 So we do have a serious risk to lives and property here, folks, right along the west

02:26 coast of Mexico.

02:28 And really, it's happening now.

02:30 And for the next, say, 12 to 24 hours, it is going to be a harrowing time down there

02:35 with an accurate real impact scale of 4 for landfall.

02:39 Meantime, here comes the moisture from Lydia.

02:42 And here comes some moisture also from the Gulf of Mexico.

02:45 The forecast for the southern U.S. from the Texas coast eastward brings drenching rain

02:50 here, folks, really over the next 36 to 48 hours as that weather system moves from the

02:56 southwest to the northeast.

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Transcript

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