Newton made landfall as a Category 1 storm Tuesday morning.
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Newton’s winds have been clocked at 90 miles per hour and the storm is expected to bring torrential rains and swelling seas to the areas of Jalisco, Colima, Michoacan, Sinaloa, Nayarit and Durango, Baja California Sur, Zacatecas and Guerrero.
Locals put tape on shop windows as the hurricane approached north of Los Cabos in La Paz, the capital of Baja California Sur.
“Just trying to make it through the day, with a little help”, Mark Hernandez, a tourist from California, said as he raised a can of beer at one of the few bars open in Cabo San Lucas.
The storm is expected to make a second landfall Wednesday over Mexico’s mainland before hitting the US on Wednesday night as a tropical depression, the National Hurricane Center said.
As of 9:00am, Newton was located 180 kilometers northwest of Cabo San Lucas with maximum sustained winds of 130 km/h and was moving northwest at 28 km/h.
“The winds are very strong”, Vazquez said, adding, “For now the damage includes a lot of branches, a lot of fallen plants, many trees”.
Los Cabos is a popular tourist destination and was said to have about 14,000 tourists Monday night after numerous flight cancellations. The NHC said that Newton is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 8 to 12 inches over the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, and 5 to 10 inches over the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Sonora, western Nayarit, and Jalisco, and a small part of Baja California Norte through Wednesday.
“There is no need for mass buying”, Los Cabos Mayor Arturo de la Rosa Escalante said, according to the AP.
Palm trees were toppled along the town’s coastal boulevard and some windows were broken. Outlying effects of the Hurricane will be felt in Arizona with storms and thunderstorms Tuesday night and Wednesday.
Police have been stationed at shopping malls to guard against looting which occurred when Hurricane Odile hit the area in 2014.
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On Monday torrential rains from then-Tropical Storm Newton caused flooding and mudslides in Michoacan and Guerrero states, but there were no deaths reported.
