Less than a week after Mexico was struck by Hurricane Katia as well as the strongest earthquake the country has experienced in a century, its Pacific Coast is about to take a hit from newly formed Hurricane Max.
Max is a Category 1 storm with maximum sustained winds of around 80 mph. It's expected to strengthen slightly before making landfall sometime tonight. A hurricane warning has been issued for an area that includes popular resort spots like Zihuatanejo and Acapulco.
The current US National Hurricane Center forecast suggests Max will make landfall just south of Acapulco, in Guerrero State.
The hurricane could produce life-threatening flooding due to torrential rains in Guerrero and Oaxaca, along with dangerous winds and destructive coastal storm-surge flooding.
Since Max is a Pacific storm, it's not counted as part of the already extremely active Atlantic hurricane season. (The Atlantic has seen six hurricanes so far this year, including Hurricanes Katia, Harvey, and Irma.) The Atlantic and Pacific have separate naming schedules, so the next tropical storm to form in the Atlantic will be named Lee. In the Pacific, another tropical storm - Norma - has formed west of Max, and seems to be headed north toward the Baja peninsula.
Max poses yet another imminent danger to Mexico, which is still trying to recover after an 8.2-magnitude quake on September 8 caused destruction and killed at least 96 people.