By: Staff Writer
May 31, 2022
Agatha is dissipating but its remnants are forecast to be drawn into a system that could bring heavy rain and gusty winds to Florida
Agatha also brought heavy rainfall to southern Mexico and parts of Central America. This rainfall prompted flash flooding and landslides in the region.
The Washington Post reported that the storm has since rapidly weakened while passing over land, but its remnants are forecast to be drawn into a developing system in the Gulf of Mexico that has increasing chances to become a new tropical depression or storm later this week.
Should a storm form, it will probably earn the name Alex and become the first of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, which officially begins Wednesday. Heading into the weekend, the nascent system could churn toward Cuba and Florida while bringing heavy rain and gusty winds.
Hurricane Agatha made landfall just west of Puerto Angel, Mexico on Monday afternoon as a Category 2 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph.
Agatha was named by the NHC on Saturday morning, as the swirl of thunderstorms off the southern coast of Mexico became more organized. The NHC officially upgraded it to Hurricane Agatha on Sunday morning, making it the first of the 2022 Eastern Pacific Hurricane Season.
Agatha underwent rapid intensification Sunday, when maximum sustained winds jumped 35 mph in under 24 hours.
Agatha made history as the strongest hurricane to make landfall in May along the Pacific coast since record keeping started in 1949. It was also only the third Eastern Pacific hurricane to make landfall in May on record. Agatha in 1971 and Barbara in 2013 also made landfall in May in the Eastern Pacific, but they were both Category 1 storms.
Once Agatha’s remnants emerge near the Yucatán Peninsula or eastern parts of the Bay of Campeche in the southern gulf, they are expected to nucleate new storm growth. The National Hurricane Center places substantial odds, around 70 percent, of this happening.
While it’s unusual for tropical storms or hurricanes to cross from one ocean basin to another, it’s not entirely unheard of. Usually, it happens as westward-drifting storms in the Caribbean trek west over the thin spine of Central America.