Rainclouds and thunderstorms off the Pacific coast of Mexico will likely trigger the first Western Hemisphere tropical storm of the 2025 season in the coming hours — with a chance this storm could strengthen into a hurricane, meteorologists say.
There is a near 100% chance that a tropical storm will form in the next 48 hours, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s National Hurricane Center (NHC). Once the storm is confirmed, its name will be tropical storm Alvin, and it will have formed just two weeks after the beginning of the Eastern Pacific hurricane season on May 15.
As of 7:50 a.m. EDT on Wednesday (May 28), an area of low pressure producing heavy rain clouds and storms was located south of the coastal Mexican city of Acapulco. The system was moving in a west to northwest direction at a speed of about 10 miles per hour (16 km/h), according to the NHC.
“An elongated area of low pressure located several hundred miles south of the coast of southern Mexico continues to produce showers and thunderstorms, but the system still lacks a well-defined circulation,” NHC meteorologists wrote on a map showing the location of the system. “Environmental conditions remain favorable for further development, and a tropical depression or tropical storm is expected to form later today or tonight.”
The system’s current direction of travel suggests that any tropical depression or storm born from it will fizzle out in the Eastern Pacific without making landfall, according to The Weather Channel — but it’s possible that the system could curl around and migrate northeastward, with stormy weather hitting Mexico’s coast around Saturday (May 31).
A tropical storm is a type of tropical cyclone with maximum sustained wind speeds between 39 and 73 mph (63 to 117 km/h). According to NOAA’s National Ocean Service, meteorologists use the term “tropical cyclone” to describe any organized system of clouds and thunderstorms that originates over tropical or subtropical waters, and then starts to rotate in a closed, low-level vortex. The weakest tropical cyclones are called tropical depressions, and they are characterized by winds slower than 39 mph. Once maximum sustained wind speeds exceed 73 mph, tropical cyclones are called hurricanes.
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