HURRICANE Kay made landfall yesterday on the Baja California Peninsula in northwestern Mexico, posing a threat of flash flooding, landslides and destructive waves, forecasters said.

The storm weakened to a Category 1 hurricane – the lowest on a scale of five – before coming ashore in a fairly sparsely populated area.

Kay was packing maximum sustained winds of nearly 120kph and located 120km southeast of Punta Eugenia, according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).

The hurricane’s centre was expected to pass over parts of the Baja California peninsula before Kay weakens to a tropical storm and heads back out over the Pacific, the NHC said.

Mexican authorities urged residents to take “extreme precautions” due to the danger of landslides and flooding.

Officials had earlier opened storm shelters for affected areas.

Strong winds and heavy rain were also expected across parts of southern California and southwestern Arizona, the NHC said.

Mexico is regularly lashed by tropical storms on both its Pacific and Atlantic coasts, generally between the months of May and November.

This year was the first since 1997 that no tropical cyclones formed in the North Atlantic, Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico last month, according to the NHC.

The deadliest storm to hit Mexico last year was a Category 3 hurricane called Grace that killed 11 people in the eastern states of Veracruz and Puebla last month. – AFP, September 9, 2022.