Further south earlier this week, the tropical storm off the west coast of Mexico, previously Twelve-E, strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane, packing sustained winds of 100 mph, and was named Hurricane Kay. The hurricane brought severe flooding along the entire west coast of Mexico, from Oaxaca to Nayarit by Thursday, September 8. Over the past 48 hours, Kay has weakened to a tropical storm, but continues to bring extreme rainfall in its path along the Baja California peninsula and into the US state of California. This weekend, the remnants of the hurricane are expected to come closer to California than any other hurricane in 25 years since Hurricane Nora in 1997. However, a key difference is that Nora moved inland through California, while its remnants Hurricane Kay is forecast to remain offshore, although there is still a high risk of flash flooding expected for southern California after the heatwave. Despite a few other tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic, these are currently not expected to pose a landfall risk in the coming days. Looking even further south, South America experienced a brief heat wave earlier this week, unusual for early spring. From Uruguay, to Paraguay and southern Bolivia, temperatures reached 10 degrees Celsius above the climatological average on Thursday afternoon. Highs reached the mid to high 30s by the afternoon, but were very short-lived compared to the heat wave in the US. Only 24 hours later, on Friday, some areas that reached 30 degrees Celsius on Thursday were a chilly 19 degrees Celsius.
