Hurricane Roslyn heads for weekend hit on Mexico’s coast
A woman walks by a flooded road as Hurricane Roslyn nears the western coast of Mexico on September 19, 2017 in Acapulco, Guerrero state. Hurricane-driven rains from Hurricane-Roslyn have battered southern Mexico as authorities ordered up flood defences and warned of more flooding rains from the storm. (Photo by Mauricio Lima/AFP/Getty Images)
A woman walks by a flooded road as Hurricane Roslyn nears the western coast of Mexico on September 19, 2017 in Acapulco, Guerrero state. Hurricane-driven rains from Hurricane-Roslyn have battered southern Mexico as authorities ordered up flood defences and warned of more flooding rains from the storm. (Photo by Mauricio Lima/AFP/Getty Images)
By Chris McKenna, David Shukman and Michael Knoop
September 19, 2017
As the remnants of Hurricane Roslyn churned up the Pacific Ocean and slammed into the US, forecasters predicted the strongest winds in the Atlantic would be to the east of the US and that the storm would become a large, Category 4 hurricane by Sunday.
But as forecasters predicted on Friday a low pressure system to the west of Roslyn would move into the Gulf of Mexico and create a threat to the Gulf Coast and a larger threat to the whole US after landfall, the National Hurricane Center had issued a post-tropical storm warning for those areas.
The warning was downgraded Sunday. It was downgraded again Sunday night to 1-day tropical storm warning along with a 1-day tropical storm watch.
It was at this point that forecasters gave the go-ahead for Hurricane Roslyn to become a major hurricane as a Category 5 and a category 1 hurricane off the coast of Mexico by Monday morning, moving west over the Pacific Ocean and then veering northeast, tracking between Central and South America.
By Monday morning, Roslyn was at Category 4 intensity and accelerating toward Mexico’s coast.
It would be a long and brutal, if not deadly, storm for the US. Forecasters were especially concerned about the potential of flooding in Florida, the South and the Gulf of Mexico.