Hurricane Polo

Hurricane — Category 3 Polo is packing 100-kt (115-mph) winds, moving NNE at 9 kt (10 mph). Skirts the coast Tue, then moves inland over the coast Tue as a weakening tropical storm.

At 200 AM MST (0900 UTC), the center of Hurricane Polo was located near latitude 23.6 North, longitude 113.8 West. Polo is now moving toward the north-northeast near 10 mph (17 km/h). A turn toward the northeast is expected this afternoon, followed by a slight increase in forward speed. On the forecast track, the center of Polo is expected to move inland along the coast of Baja California Sur late this afternoon or early this evening, then move inland in southern Sonora late Monday night or early Tuesday morning. Maximum sustained winds are near 115 mph (185 km/h) with higher gusts. Polo is a category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Polo is forecast to be near major hurricane strength when it reaches Baja California Sur late today, and it is expected to be a hurricane when it makes landfall in mainland Mexico late tonight or early Tuesday morning. Hurricane-force — National Hurricane Center · public advisory 31

Polo tracks over open water — no coast is in the outlook. Along its path, our forecast reads:

This is the East Pacific · 22°N–32°N, 116°W–107°W. Polo’s forecast track is the dotted spine — the labelled dots mark its position each day. Every cell is shaded by how many hours it spends inside Polo’s gale-force (≥34 kt · 39 mph) wind across the whole forecast, the damaging core counted double.

Read it two ways at once. Colour is the total — the hours of gale-force wind a place piles up. A slow storm writes its danger in duration, not in any single gust, so the longer the wind sits over a place, the deeper its colour. Opacity is confidence — solid where the official probability of that wind is high, faint where it is only a chance. So a deep, solid cell is a place the wind will work for a long time and likely will; a pale, faint one is a brief, uncertain brush at the edge of the cone.

Hurricane Polo is expected to reach the coast of Baja California Sur this evening after strengthening over warm waters in the Gulf of California. A tropical specialist tracking the system highlighted its continued intensification right up to landfall in Mexico, pointing to a more powerful arrival than some earlier outlooks had suggested. This focus on late-stage strengthening adds detail to the official forecast for the region.

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