A storm off Mexico's Pacific coast has developed into an "extremely dangerous" hurricane, though forecasters say it's too soon to know whether California will see any impacts from the system.
Polo intensified from a 50-mph tropical storm on the morning of Monday, Sept. 21, to a 160-mph Category 5 hurricane in 24 hours, according to AccuWeather forecasters.
"This storm has the potential to rapidly intensify and begin bringing flooding rain to the Mexican states of Jalisco, Colima and Michoacán by Tuesday," AccuWeather Hurricane Lead Expert Alex Duffus said in a statement.
The National Hurricane Center said the storm, centered about 205 miles south of Zihuatanejo, Mexico, on Tuesday morning, is expected to continue moving "slowly off the coast of Mexico during the next couple of days."
Whether California will see any impacts from the system, however, remains uncertain.
"There are different features of the weather pattern that would need to fall in line to even bring the (storm's) remnants north and cause any impact," Dave Munyan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego, said in a Sept. 22 phone interview. "So, I don't want to say the stars have to align for it to happen, but there's a lot of things that do need to happen for the storm to track northward."
Here's what Californians should know about Hurricane Polo.
Will Hurricane Polo affect California?
Munyan said it's too soon to tell whether Southern California will see any impacts from Hurricane Polo.
"There's just too much uncertainty in the track of where the storm is going to go," Munyan said.
Over the next few days, he said, the storm is expected to drift parallel to Mexico's coast. By 6 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 27, however, it is predicted to be near the southern tip of Baja California.
"Beyond that, we'll have to see exactly where our forecast models want to take it," Munyan said.
Right now, those models are showing "a significant amount of variability" from one forecast run to the next, Munyan said. In one run of the American Global Forecast System model, the storm dissipates over the Pacific Ocean.
"But then the next run of that same model (the storm) gets caught up in another system and takes the remnants up the Sea of Cortez, which could produce rain in the deserts come ... the middle part of next week," Munyan said.
For now, he said, the uncertainty is so high that "it's not even worth getting concerned over" in California.
"At worst, we could just see some rain in the middle part of next week, but the most important thing that we're going to be telling folks — at least for the next couple of days — is just to keep an eye on the forecast. See how things change," Munyan said.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Hurricane Polo becomes Category 5. Will it impact California?
