Sunday, December 29, 2024

Grace now a tropical storm as it crosses Yucatán toward Gulf of Mexico

Tropical Storm Grace was delivering rain and wind as it made its way across the state of Yucatán Thursday afternoon and was expected to emerge in the Gulf of Mexico Thursday night.

At 4:00 p.m. CDT it was located in the municipality of Halachó, about 80 kilometers southwest of Mérida, and heading west at 24 kmh with maximum sustained winds of 85 kmh.

There was some flooding and power outages but no damage as of Thursday afternoon.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center forecasts that Grace will reintensify as a hurricane and make a second landfall, this time on the coast of Veracruz, late Friday or early Saturday.

A hurricane warning remains in effect from the port of Veracruz to Cabo Rojo and tropical storm warnings from Tulum to Campeche and from north of Cabo Rojo on the mainland to Barra del Tordo, Tamaulipas.

Grace struck Quintana Roo 15 kilometers south of Tulum as a hurricane with 112 kph winds at 4:40 a.m. CDT on Thursday, and departed five hours later as a Yucatán-bound tropical storm.

The Category 1 hurricane did little damage and caused no casualties, Governor Carlos Joaquín reported.

In advance of the hurricane’s arrival, 337 people were evacuated from their homes in Felipe Carrillo Puerto and Tulum as a precautionary measure. There were 78 calls to emergency during the storm, mostly for downed trees, power lines and billboards.

The Federal Electricity Commission reported that 180,429 customers were without power during the storm.

Sixty-six flights in and out of Cancún airport were canceled on Wednesday, but flights resumed Thursday at 11:00 a.m., airport officials said.

Mexico News Daily

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