Off the Pacific coast of Mexico, Hurricane Polo became the third category 5 storm of the eastern Pacific season, its 180-mile-per-hour winds drawn from ocean waters running at record warmth — more than three degrees above their historical average. The storm is a portrait of what a climate-altered sea can produce: not merely a hurricane, but a sustained extreme, held aloft by conditions that have no precedent in this region's recorded history. Though a direct landfall is not expected, the slow drift of such a system carries its own kind of reckoning, as torrential rainfall threatens to overwhel
Hurricane Polo intensifies to rare category 5 as warm waters fuel 'truly remarkable' storm
Potential for deadly flooding and mudslides in southwestern Mexico from predicted rainfall of 6-8 inches; residents in Jalisco, Colima, and Michoacan at risk.