The hurricane season in the U.S. has been fairly slow this year – at least so far.  Mexico, our neighbor to the south, however, has not been so lucky.

Hit from both sides, Mexico was slammed by two separate tropical storms this week.   Manuel moved in from the Pacific and Ingrid came ashore from the Gulf.  Both storms brought torrential rain that caused widespread flooding, landslides, and power outages.  Impacting millions of people across the country, this one-two punch of extreme weather claimed the lives of at least one hundred people and displaced thousands more. 

One of the hardest hit areas was Acapulco on the west coast, where 7.43 inches of rain is reported to have fallen in one twenty-four hour period.  The flooding was so severe in this popular resort town that it turned roads into raging muddy rivers and carried crocodiles into the city.  With the only highway out of town destroyed in a landslide and the airport submerged in waist deep water,  locals along with nearly forty-thousand tourists have been stranded there for days.  

According to the Mexican National Weather Service, the last time Mexico was hit by two tropical storms within a span of twenty-four hours was back in 1958.