MEXICO CITY (AP) – As deadly Tropical Storm Gamma stalled just north of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Monday, a potentially more threatening Tropical Storm Delta formed in the Caribbean, aiming to hit western Cuba and eventually the U.S. Gulf Coast, likely as a hurricane.
Gamma lashed Mexico’s resort-studded coast with near-hurricane force winds, and drenched Tabasco and Chiapas states with a deluge that killed at least 6 people and forced thousands from their homes.
Delta, meanwhile, was forecast to become a hurricane before hitting Cuba, and then intensify with winds around 100 mph (160 kph) before making landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast around Friday. And while there is a large uncertainty in track and strengthening five days out, “there is a risk of dangerous storm surge, wind, and rainfall hazards along the coast from Louisiana to the western Florida Panhandle,” the hurricane center said.
Mexico’s civil defense agency said in a statement that four of the deaths blamed on Gamma, including two children, were in Chiapas, where a landslide on a mountainous slope buried their home. The other two deaths were in Tabasco state, where one person was dragged away by the water and another drowned.
Gamma, along with cold fronts, combined over the weekend to cause extreme rains in parts of the Yucatan Peninsula and Chiapas, affecting more than half a million people. The hardest-hit state was Tabasco, where more than 3,400 were evacuated to shelters.