AFP/Mexico city
Mexico put the Baja California peninsula on high alert on Sunday as Hurricane Odile churned towards the popular Los Cabos tourist resorts with swirling 135-mile-per-hour winds.
Odile was a highly dangerous storm likely to trigger deadly flash floods and landslides, officials warned, rating the hurricane category four on the five-point Saffir-Simpson scale, with five being the most destructive.
"It could approach or make landfall as a category four in Los Cabos," said National Weather Service coordinator Juan Manuel Caballero, referring to the tourist resorts at the peninsula's southern tip.
Hotel occupancy in Los Cabos is low at this time of year, but authorities were concerned about people living in coastal areas and were preparing shelters for 30,000 residents.
The US National Hurricane Center said Odile would be near the southern portion of the peninsula later Sunday, and was expected to make landfall by early Monday.
It predicted swells and "life-threatening surf," coastal flooding and five to 10 inches of rain.
"These rains are likely to result in life-threatening flash floods and mudslides," the Miami-based NHC warned.
At 1500 GMT, the storm was 227 miles (365 kilometers) southeast of the tip of Baja California and was packing sustained winds of 135 miles per hour, the weather center said.
"The weather alert is for all the Baja California peninsula for at least the next 24 hours," National Water Commission director David Korenfel said.
The hurricane was moving erratically and veering dangerously toward land, Caballero said.
He added that it could miss Los Cabos and enter the Gulf of California instead, so safety precautions needed to be taken in the nearby Mexican states of Sinaloa, Nayarit and Colima as well.
