Norma, once a powerful storm that brought strong winds and heavy rain to portions of Baja California Sur over the weekend, was downgraded to a tropical depression early Monday as it was forecast to move inland along the state of Sinaloa, in western Mexico, forecasters said.
Norma made landfall on Saturday as Category 1 hurricane packing 80 mile-per-hour winds in Baja California Sur in the town of Todos Santos, about 47 miles north of the resort city of Cabo San Lucas.
The storm, which had maximum winds of 35 m.p.h on Monday, was expected to move east with little change in strength before it reaches the coast. The storm will begin dissipating later in the day or overnight, the National Hurricane Center said.
As of Monday morning, there were no coastal warnings or watches in effect. However, forecasters warned that rainfall from Norma will continue across portions of Sinaloa later in the day, bringing one to two inches of additional rain.
Mudslides, powerful winds, heavy rain and flooding hit the southern part of Baja California Sur over the weekend as the storm moved inland.
Norma caused torrential rains on Sunday in Sinaloa and intense rains in parts of the neighboring states of Chihuahua and Durango, Mexico’s meteorological service said on social media. Rainfall totals in parts of Sinaloa could add up to 18 inches by Monday, forecasters said.
After the peak of the storm passed over the municipality of Los Cabos on Saturday afternoon, Víctor Manuel Castro Cosío, the governor of Baja California Sur, cautioned residents of La Paz, a seafront community and the state’s capital, to brace for its impact.
“The emergency has not passed,” Mr. Castro Cosío said at an afternoon news conference. “We continue to ask people, especially in the municipality of La Paz, to exercise precautions.”
Video posted to social media on Saturday afternoon showed fast-moving floodwaters thrashing stranded vehicles on the streets of La Paz.
Mexican officials said on Saturday that no deaths had been reported, though the storm had obstructed roadways, caused power outages and torn the roofs off some buildings.
Local officials warned residents in areas prone to flooding to evacuate to shelters because rescue crews were likely to have a difficult time reaching them as the center of the storm barreled through. Many residents had already evacuated.
Preparations for potentially dangerous effects from the storm began on Friday. Officials suspended school in the municipality of Los Cabos in Baja California Sur, and the state government shared a list on Facebook of more than 40 temporary shelters that residents could travel to ahead of the threatening conditions.
Officials had also closed the ports of San José del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas, and hotel and resort workers were making plans to “protect the safety” of the roughly 40,000 tourists in the area, according to the governor’s office.
A hurricane warning, which is typically issued 36 hours before the onset of tropical-storm-force winds, had been in effect for the peninsula from Todos Santos, a town on the Pacific Coast, across the southern portion of the peninsula to Los Barriles, a town on the Gulf of California. Mexican officials downgraded it to a tropical storm warning on Saturday afternoon.
Though Norma made landfall on Saturday as a Category 1 storm, wind speeds of 130 miles per hour had pushed it into a Category 4 hurricane on Thursday.
On Sunday, a depression about 500 miles southeast of Acapulco Mexico formed into Tropical Storm Otis, becoming the 15th named storm in the eastern Pacific in 2023, compared with 19 named storms in 2022.
The National Hurricane Center said in a Monday advisory that Otis had maximum sustained winds of 45 m.p.h. and was located about 425 miles south-southeast of Acapulco, a beach resort town along Mexico’s Pacific Coast. Forecasters said Otis was expected to approach the southern coast of Mexico late Tuesday into Wednesday.
Livia Albeck-Ripka, Derrick Bryson Taylor and Johnny Diaz contributed reporting.
