MEXICO CITY – Lidia dissipated Wednesday after hitting land as a Category 4 hurricane near the resort of Puerto Vallarta. One person was killed by a falling tree, another drowned in a swollen river and two others were injured after the hurricane made landfall.
The hurricane knocked over trees and blew roofs off houses with winds as high as 140 mph (220 kph) before moving inland.
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Laura Velázquez, the head of Mexico’s civil defense system, said Wednesday that one person died on the northern outskirts of Puerto Vallarta after being hit by a falling tree, and two others were injured elsewhere in the area.
The governor of Jalisco state, Enrique Alfaro, said another man drowned in a town south of where the hurricane hit when he tried to cross a swollen river late Tuesday night.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Wednesday that Lidia’s winds were down to 35 mph (57 kph) as it dissipated about 145 miles (235 kilometers) north-northeast of the city of Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city and the capital of the western state of Jalisco.
Lidia made landfall Tuesday on Cabo Corrientes, a sparsely populated peninsula, and then moved inland south of Puerto Vallarta with winds of 105 mph (165 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center.
The hurricane remained powerful even after moving over land, with some highways briefly blocked in the region. Jalisco state had 23 shelters open, and the Puerto Vallarta city government said a few dozen people had gone to shelters there.
Lidia's impact came one day after Tropical Storm Max hit the southern Pacific coast, hundreds of miles away, and then dissipated. Rains from Max washed out part of a coastal highway in the southern state of Guerrero.
In 2015, Hurricane Patricia, a Category 5 hurricane, also made landfall on the same sparsely-populated stretch of coastline between the resort of Puerto Vallarta and the major port of Manzanillo.
Victor Hugo Romo, the head of the Jalisco state civil defense office, said several homes around the landfall area had their roofs blown off. The Puerto Vallarta city government said about a dozen trees were knocked down there.
Trees were also downed in the neighboring state of Nayarit.
Also Wednesday, Tropical Storm Sean formed far out in the Atlantic, but the Hurricane Center forecast that it is not likely to strengthen much.
Sean had winds of 40 mph (65 kph) and was located about 780 miles (1,260 kilometers) west-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands. It was moving west-northwest at 13 mph (20 kph). Sean was expected to decline to a tropical depression next week without ever approaching land.
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