Hurricane Willa strengthened into an extremely dangerous Category 4 tropical cyclone on Sunday and has its sights on the Mexico coastline in the coming days.

Published 6 years ago, updated 5 years ago

From reports by http://www.severe-weather.eu and https://www.accuweather.com

The borderline Category 5 major hurricane Willa has gone through incredibly rapid strengthening in only 24 hours – an increase from 70 mph on Oct 21st 03 GMT to 145 mph on Oct 22nd 03 GMT. Willa is packing max sustained winds of 155 mph with a central pressure around 930 mbar. It is expected to maintain strong Category 4 or even Category 5 strength for another 24 hours before it starts weakening while it nears southwest Mexico late tomorrow and makes landfall overnight.

Willa’s future track leads it towards landfall in Mexico tomorrow, where it rapidly becomes post-tropical storm while moving towards southern Texas later this week. Willa will likely bring major rainfall into parts of Mexico and is forecast to be a dangerous hurricane when it reaches the Islas Marias and the coast of southwestern Mexico by late Tuesday. Life-threatening storm surge and flash floods are expected, along with damaging hurricane-force winds.

“Willa is expected to make landfall about 40-60 miles south of Mazatlan, Mexico, late Tuesday night or Wednesday morning,” said AccuWeather Hurricane Expert Dan Kottlowski.

“Given the current structure and the well-defined wind field around Willa, this hurricane has the potential to bring significant and perhaps catastrophic winds and storm surge damage to where it makes landfall,” added Kottlowski.

“Once inland, the hurricane’s wind field will interact with the higher terrain, and this will cause Willa to weaken considerably during Wednesday,” said Kottlowski.

Willa is yet another major hurricane in this incredible Pacific season, after a number of Category 4/5 hurricanes (Aletta, Bud, Hector, Lane, Olivia, Rosa, Sergo, Walaka) and super typhoons (Jebi, Jelawat, Maria, Mangkhut, Trami, Kong-Rey).

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