Hurricane Flossie strengthens further off Mexico’s Pacific coast

Hur­ri­cane Flossie has con­tin­ued to strength­en off Mex­i­co’s south­west­ern Pa­cif­ic coast with max­i­mum sus­tained winds of 140 kph (85 mph), ac­cord­ing to the U.S. Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter in Mi­a­mi.

The hur­ri­cane cen­ter said Flossie be­came a Cat­e­go­ry 1 hur­ri­cane Mon­day night.

The cen­ter said Flossie was about 260 kilo­me­ters (160 miles) south of Man­zanil­lo and was mov­ing west-north­west off the Mex­i­can coast at 17 kph (10 mph). It was ex­pect­ed to skirt the coast for a few days while drop­ping rain on sev­er­al Mex­i­can states.

Mex­i­co’s gov­ern­ment ear­li­er is­sued a trop­i­cal storm warn­ing along the south­west­ern coast from Pun­ta San Tel­mo to Playa Pe­ru­la.

A trop­i­cal storm watch re­mained in ef­fect for oth­er ar­eas on the south­west coast from Zi­hu­atane­jo to Cabo Cor­ri­entes. A watch means trop­i­cal storm con­di­tions are pos­si­ble in the area with­in two days.

While its cen­ter is fore­cast to re­main off­shore, rain­fall up to 150 mm (6 inch­es) was like­ly for parts of the Mex­i­can states of Guer­rero, Mi­choacán, Col­i­ma, and Jalis­co in­to Wednes­day, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of life-threat­en­ing flood­ing and mud­slides, es­pe­cial­ly in steep ter­rain.

Flossie is fore­cast to strength­en over the next 36 hours be­fore weak­en­ing over cool­er wa­ters.

MEX­I­CO CITY (AP)