Hurricane Polo intensified back into a Category 5 storm early Thursday off Mexico’s Pacific coast but was expected to stay offshore before moving farther out to sea.
Its outer rainbands were spreading across southwestern Mexico, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
“Some near-term strengthening is possible, and Polo is expected to remain a powerful major hurricane for the next few days,” the Miami-based center said.
Polo’s strength has been fluctuating. Its maximum sustained winds climbed as high as 180 mph at one point, far exceeding the 157 mph threshold for Category 5, the strongest on the hurricane scale, but it was a Category 4 on Wednesday before its top winds hit 160 mph on Thursday.
Elsewhere in the Pacific, Tropical Storm Nolo formed on Wednesday, triggering a hurricane watch for Hawaii’s Big Island. Nolo is expected to become a hurricane sometime Thursday.
Maps show Hurricane Polo’s path
As of early Thursday, Polo’s core was about 150 miles off the coast of Zihuatanejo, a coastal resort city in the Mexican state of Guerrero.
Map shows Hurricane Polo’s forecast path as of Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026.
CBS News
It was sending hurricane-force winds outward up to 40 miles from its center and tropical storm-force winds some 125 miles out. Polo was heading northwest at 9 mph.
Polo was forecast to bring tropical storm conditions to parts of the coastline on Thursday. In some areas, heavy rainfall “may produce life-threatening flooding and mudslides, especially in areas of steep terrain,” the hurricane center warned.
The storm remains far south of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula.
Map shows the Eastern Pacific tropical outlook.
CBS News
The Mexican government issued a tropical storm warning for a stretch of the Mexican coast from Tecpan de Galeana, in Guerrero, to Manzanillo in Colima. A tropical storm watch was in effect from Punta San Telmo to Playa Perula, in the state of Jalisco. Tropical storm warnings are issued when forecasts indicate tropical storm conditions will develop in a particular area, while tropical storm watches are issued when those conditions are possible, but not imminent.
Parts of Guerrero may receive between 4 and 6 inches of rainfall as Polo barrels past, with up to 8 inches possible in certain spots, through Thursday. Between 2 and 4 inches of rain could also fall in coastal parts of the states of Oaxaca, Colima and Jalisco through Thursday, forecasters said.
Along with rain, Polo was also expected to cause life-threatening surf conditions, including rip currents, along the southwestern Mexican coast. The surf conditions could also contribute to flooding.
Polo’s extreme rapid intensification
Polo underwent what’s called extreme rapid intensification, in which a storm’s wind speeds increase by 58 mph or more over the course of 24 hours, between Monday and Tuesday. Its intensification was dramatic even by those standards, with winds that skyrocketed from 45 mph early Monday morning to 150 mph at around the same time the following day. The hurricane center described its transformation as “truly remarkable.”
Polo’s central pressure — an indicator of its strength and potential destructiveness — made it the second-strongest hurricane on record in the Eastern Pacific, behind 2015’s Hurricane Patricia. The storm’s wind speeds tied 2009’s Hurricane Rick as the third-strongest on record for the region.
Unusually strong El Niño conditions this year have been amping up tropical cyclone activity in the Pacific, with warmer waters, moist air and less wind shear enabling storm formation.
contributed to this report.
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