John dumps rain on Baja, could drench U.S.
POSTED: 5:04 p.m. EDT, September 3, 2006
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LA PAZ, Mexico (AP) -- Residents dragged trees from their yards in this hurricane-battered city Sunday as Tropical Storm John made a soggy march up the Baja California peninsula, soaking fishing villages and retirement communities and threatening flooding in parts of the U.S. southwest.
The weakening storm hurled rain on the normally arid Baja, threatening flash floods. Forecasters said there could be up to 18 inches of rain in isolated areas.
The storm was also expected to dump up to 3 inches of rain in desert areas from southern California to west Texas in the next few days and could cause some flooding, said meteorologist Eric Blake of the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.
President Vicente Fox visited Los Cabos on Sunday and was headed to La Paz to survey the damage.
John was a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 110 mph when it hit the southern tip of the peninsula late Friday. But officials reported no deaths and little destruction, though some shantytown shacks were blown down.
La Paz, a city of more than 150,000, was among the hardest hit. The storm knocked down trees, sent billboards flying and cut electricity.
"You heard a huge 'voom' and look what it did to the trees," said Alfonso Gonzalez, 72, who was cleaning fallen branches from his front yard in La Paz.
The storm initially was forecast to slam into the resort area of Los Cabos and move westward out to sea. But Blake said a high-pressure ridge was weaker than expected and that allowed the storm to keep traveling north up the peninsula.
The storm had maximum sustained winds of 45 mph and was located about 20 miles southwest of the ancient mining town of Santa Rosalia Sunday after slogging past Loreto, which is being developed as a massive resort aimed at U.S. visitors and retirees.
It was moving northwest up the spine of the narrow peninsula at about 9 mph and was expected to fade into a tropical depression as it remains over land most of the day. Forecasters said it was likely to move out to sea well south of Tijuana later this week.
People experienced John's passage over Los Cabos -- home to the tourist resorts of Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo -- depending largely on whether they were visitors taking shelter in marble-lobbied hotels or local residents who build and staff them. (Watch an unimpressed tourist explain how John didn't live up to its billing -- 1:37)
"They had an open bar and a little DJ come in," recounted Tim Anderson, a highway administration employee from Alamosa, Colorado, who waited out the hurricane in a hotel in San Jose del Cabo.
But Ruben Moreno, 32, a bricklayer, defied evacuation orders and spent Friday night huddled in his shack made of tarpaper, tin and plastic tarps in one of Cabo San Lucas' shantytowns. (Watch floodwaters surge through town -- 1:59)
"The wind came through hard, early in the morning," Moreno said. Nearby, a stream of water had coursed through the camp, piling mud and sand in its wake. At least two of his neighbors' jury-rigged, wood-frame shacks had collapsed, leaving a mix of plastic sheeting, tarpaper and blankets in the sand.
Los Cabos Mayor Luis Armando Diaz said homes had been damaged and a highway cut off farther along the coast where the storm hit, between his city and La Paz. In one of those towns, Los Barriles, residents reached by telephone told local radio stations that tin roofs had been ripped from homes.
The airport serving Los Cabos reopened Saturday after remaining closed for nearly three days. Lines of tourists formed to catch flights out of the still largely shuttered beach towns, their vacations spoiled.
