Hurricane Trudy weakens off Mexico's Pacific coast as cleanup effort begins

MEXICO CITY, Oct 18 - Hurricane Trudy weakened slightly off Mexico's Pacific coast on ​Sunday and was expected to begin rapidly losing strength later in the day as it moved away from ‌the mainland, forecasters said.

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Trudy was located about 180 ⁠miles (290 km) west-northwest of Manzanillo, ​with maximum sustained winds of ⁠100 mph (155 kph), down from 105 mph earlier in ‌the day, moving northwest at ‌6 mph (9 kph).

Trudy's center is expected to move farther ⁠away from Mexico's Pacific coast ⁠before passing south of Baja California Sur on Monday and Tuesday.

Mexico's government, meanwhile, discontinued all hurricane and tropical storm warnings along the Pacific coast and for the Islas Marias archipelago, but authorities said locals in southwestern and west-central Mexico, ‌as well as Baja California Sur, should continue ​to monitor the storm.

Separately, Mexican authorities warned of severe weather linked to Cold Front No. 2 in the country's south and southeast. The National Civil Protection Coordination said the system was expected to stall over southern Veracruz, bringing extraordinary and torrential rainfall.

In Veracruz, more than 1,500 homes were ​affected by floodwaters, while federal, state and municipal authorities were carrying out ‌cleanup and recovery ‌operations ⁠as water levels gradually receded.

Civil protection authorities also said they were closely monitoring river and reservoir levels in Veracruz, Tabasco, Chiapas and Oaxaca, while strong northerly winds and waves of up to ‌6 meters (20 feet) had ​already caused coastal flooding and ‌road closures in parts ⁠of Tabasco.

(Reporting ​by Stefanie Eschenbacher and Lizbeth Diaz; Editing by Christina Fincher and ​Thomas Derpinghaus)

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