With winds of 115 mph, Hurricane Jimena has Mexico’s Baja California peninsula in its sights.
The Category 3 storm is expected to “continue moving to the northwest in the direction of the Baja California region,” said Robbie Berg, a specialist at the National Hurricane Center. Jimena is the 10th named storm of the Pacific season. “It started out kind of slow for the Pacific. But actually August, now we’ve had seven named storms form, and that’s pretty busy for August. We haven’t seen that — I think it’s been a couple decades since we’ve seen that many storms in August,” Berg said. The hurricane could bring some much-needed rain to southern California, where wildfires have scorched thousands of acres in the greater Los Angeles area. There’s no reason for people in that area to panic, but they should keep an eye on Jimena, Berg said. “There’s no watches or warnings in effect, but we would like residents and tourists in the area to monitor the progress of the storm,” Berg said. “We do expect it to maintain its major hurricane strength as it heads up into that area.” Tropical Storm Kevin has also emerged in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. However, Berg says it is weak — with winds at 50 mph — and is not expected to pose a serious threat.
