Hurricane Carlotta Lethal Rip Current Fears: Track Storm

Formerly Tropical Storm Carlotta has become a Category 1 hurricane in the Pacific Ocean and is travelling away from Mexico’s coast, according to the National Hurricane Center’s (NHC) Friday morning advisory.

Category 1 hurricanes—the lowest of the five hurricane categories—are characterized as having “very dangerous winds” between 74 and 95 miles per hour. On Friday, Carlotta surpassed the hurricane threshold with maximum sustained winds of 80 miles per hour with higher gusts. It was first identified as a tropical depression on Wednesday.

Located nearly 450 miles southwest of the southern tip of Baja California, Carlotta is the first hurricane believed to have formed in the Eastern Pacific this season and the third named storm in the region.

The hurricane is forecast to travel northwest while moving further out to sea and avoiding any potential landfall in Mexico. Storms formed in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans tend to travel west, meaning that Atlantic storms pose a greater risk of landfall in the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean, while Pacific storms tend to bring large swells ashore rather than making landfall.

Ocean swells from Carlotta are “likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions through Sunday,” the advisory warns, noting that these conditions are likely to impact the coasts of west-central mainland Mexico and the southern Baja California peninsula.

The NHC said the “small hurricane has an opportunity to intensify further over the next day or so while it remains over warm ocean waters and low to moderate vertical wind shear,” estimating that it could reach “peak intensity as a Category 2 hurricane in 24-36 hours.”

Cooler water temperatures are expected to eventually weaken the storm. The NHC’s forecast estimated that the hurricane will be downgraded to a storm with sustained winds between 39 and 73 miles per hour by 5 p.m. PDT on Sunday.

Newsweek reached out to the NHC for comment via email on Friday.

Carlotta follows Hurricane Beryl, another Atlantic storm which last month strengthened at an “unheard of rate” for that early in the hurricane season, hurricane specialist and storm expert Michael Lowry told Newsweek.

Beryl fluctuated between different categories on the hurricane scale due to rapid intensification and at one point attained Category 5 status with winds reaching 165 mph, making it the earliest Category 5 storm in the Atlantic.

It made landfall in Texas as a Category 1 hurricane after bulldozing through the Caribbean. The storm killed at least 11 people in the Caribbean, according to The Associated Press (AP). Six people in Texas and one person in Louisiana were also killed.