Vance Is Down to 85 mph, Yet Colima and Jalisco Still Face Days of Rain
Vance weakened to 85 mph by 3 a.m. CST Sunday and the center is forecast to stay offshore, yet the hurricane center still expects flooding rain and rough surf.
On Saturday, Oct. 24, Hurricane Vance was a 110 mph Category 2, 365 miles south-southwest of Acapulco. That is the snapshot some headlines still repeat. At 3 a.m. CST Sunday, Oct. 25, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) had it at 85 mph and 295 miles (475 km) southwest of Acapulco, creeping north-northwest at 5 mph.
As of 3 a.m. CST Sunday (0900 UTC), Vance is a weakening Category 1 hurricane with no coastal watches or warnings, and NHC's forecast keeps its center offshore. The hazard is the one a category does not measure: NHC still expects heavy rain through Thursday, Oct. 29 across Colima and western Michoacán and Jalisco, and "life-threatening surf and rip current conditions" along southern and southwestern Mexico.
The 110 mph figure is a day old
Advisory 12, issued at 3 a.m. CST Saturday, carried 110 mph winds and a central pressure of 965 millibars. Advisory 16 carries 85 mph and 980 millibars. The bulletin's own headline says Vance "weakens slightly," and the forecaster's discussion goes further: "Given the ragged satellite appearance, the initial intensity is lowered to 75 kt for this advisory, and that could be generous." Seventy-five knots is 85 mph.
On the peak, outlets disagree. The advisory table tops out at 110 mph, Category 2 (Category 3 begins at 111 mph), yet NHC's Friday 9 p.m. CST discussion says Vance "briefly reached major hurricane intensity" earlier that evening. Both are in the record.
The climb and the retreat are lopsided. Winds rose from 35 to 110 mph in 60 hours, from 9 a.m. CST Wednesday, Oct. 21 to 9 p.m. Friday, then gave back 25 mph, about 23%, in the next 30.
The decline is written in NHC's advisory archive for Vance. Wind shear, which is wind that changes speed or direction with height, has tilted the storm's core so it cannot stack into a tight column. NHC adds that "mid-level dry air is forecast to entrain into the circulation," which "will induce a steadier rate of weakening."
A storm 295 miles out still has a rain forecast
NHC's rainfall paragraph as of 3 a.m. CST Sunday: through Thursday, 2 to 4 inches (about 51 to 102 mm), with isolated totals of 7 inches (about 178 mm), across Colima and western parts of Michoacán and Jalisco. It "may produce flooding and mudslides, especially in areas along steep terrain." Behind that narrow coast the land climbs quickly.
The paragraph is also smaller than it was. Advisories 14 and 15 on Saturday said 4 to 6 inches with isolated totals around 10 inches (254 mm). The midpoint of the new range is 40% lower, by Daybreak Wire's arithmetic, and the isolated maximum 30% lower. The rainfall sentence no longer says "life-threatening," though the surf sentence still does.
One phrase vanished too. Advisory 13 said a Tropical Storm Watch "may be required for portions of the southwestern coast of Mexico later today or tonight," and Advisory 14 said "tonight or on Sunday." Advisories 15 and 16 drop the line, and no watch or warning was ever issued for Vance. The forecast moved in the storm's favor, though not to zero.
Then there is the surf. NHC says swells "are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions" for several days. Wave heights differ, second-hand through Saturday reports: Mexico's national weather service (SMN), relayed by civil protection (CNPC), forecast 3 to 4 meters off Michoacán and Guerrero, while the navy (Semar) cited 1.8 to 2.4 meters from Jalisco to Chiapas. NHC's rip-current page explains the danger on a bright day: a distant weather system sending wave energy to the coast can quickly turn a beautiful day into a dangerous situation.
Wind is a smaller part of NHC's forecast. Hurricane-force winds reach out up to 30 miles (45 km) and tropical-storm-force winds up to 150 miles (240 km). Manzanillo's five-day chance of 39 mph winds is 6%. AccuWeather, a private forecaster, wrote before Advisory 16 that 4 to 8 inches could fall from coastal Michoacán to eastern Jalisco, with a "StormMax" of 12 inches; that predates the cut.
The reason for the long rain window is speed. Slower storms rain longer on the same ground, and NHC's hazards page says it plainly:
"Slower moving and larger storms produce more rainfall. In addition, mountainous terrain enhances rainfall from a tropical cyclone."
National Hurricane Center, hazards guidance
Along NHC's track the center covers about 515 miles between 3 a.m. Sunday and 0600 UTC Friday, roughly 4.4 mph, by Daybreak Wire's calculation. Vance sits between a trough over the western United States and a ridge over Mexico, and "remains in weak steering currents."
That weakness also moves the track. On Friday evening NHC laid out a fork: "A weaker, more vertically tilted system could be steered farther westward, while a stronger, vertically coupled hurricane would be more likely to continue northward toward the southwestern or west-central coast of Mexico." Vance took the weaker branch. Daybreak Wire's calculation from NHC's positions puts the center about 130 to 136 miles from Manzanillo at its closest, around Wednesday, Oct. 28 (136 miles at the 0600 UTC forecast point, midnight CST).
Dry air and shear finish the job. A hurricane's winds also churn colder water upward, and Vance crosses patches earlier storms already stirred; NHC says it "remains in the wake of an abundance of recent cyclones that have moved over this area off the southwestern coast of Mexico over the past month or so." Simon, two weeks ago, was a Category 4 with its eyewall very near the same coast.
A busy season has a known driver, within limits. NOAA's May outlook for the eastern Pacific gave a 70% chance of an above-normal year, and said El Niño years average about 30 more points of accumulated cyclone energy than La Niña years. El Niño's two-sided effect is a quiet Atlantic and a busy Pacific. Fox Weather counts Vance as the 11th major hurricane of the season. But NOAA "does not make seasonal hurricane landfall predictions," and no source gathered here says El Niño sets the course of one late-October storm.
Offshore storms have measured 10 inches or more on this coast
The best evidence of what a storm like Vance can do comes from NHC's finished reports. The first five rows below are single-station storm totals from those reports; the last row is a forecast range for a wide area, so the rows are not like for like.
| Storm | What NHC's report says about the coast | Highest mainland station total in the report | Deaths in the report |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priscilla, Oct. 4-10, 2025 | Category 3, stayed offshore; no sustained tropical-storm-force winds recorded on the mainland | 10.57 in, Zihuatanejo, Guerrero (10.55 in at Melcor Ocampo, Michoacán) | No casualties reported |
| Raymond, Oct. 9-11, 2025 | Tropical storm, just offshore | 7.46 in, Zihuatanejo | Regional deaths not conclusively linked |
| Patricia, landfall Oct. 23, 2015 (UTC) | Category 4 landfall, Jalisco | 12.50 in, Nevado Colima, Jalisco | Two direct |
| Willa, landfall Oct. 24, 2018 (UTC) | Category 3 landfall, Sinaloa | 15.39 in, Milpillas San Andrés (13.17 in at Cihuatlán) | Four direct, all from floodwaters |
| Otis, landfall Oct. 25, 2023 (UTC) | Category 5 landfall, Acapulco | 10.47 in, Acapulco | At least 52 |
| Vance, NHC forecast as of 3 a.m. CST Oct. 25 | Category 1, center forecast to stay offshore | Forecast: 2 to 4 in, "isolated higher totals of 7 inches" | None reported |
Priscilla is the closest analogue to the question Vance poses. NHC's report says it "moved along, but offshore of the coast of southwestern mainland Mexico," and found:
"While tropical storm watches were issued for portions of mainland Mexico and the Baja Peninsula, no reports of sustained tropical-storm-force winds were recorded."
National Hurricane Center, Tropical Cyclone Report on Hurricane Priscilla (2025)
Yet Zihuatanejo logged 10.57 inches (268.4 mm), and the report notes "localized damage from flooding and rough surf" near Puerto Vallarta. NHC's report on Priscilla recorded no casualties.
Landfalls add the other half. Willa's report says Four direct deaths occurred as a result of the floodwaters.
Patricia moved fast, and its lowland rain was "not overly heavy due to the storm's acceleration," though Nevado Colima reported 12.50 inches. Patricia, Willa and Otis all came ashore on UTC Oct. 23, 24 and 25 in different years. Vance is the reverse case: weak steering, slow motion. These are what stations have measured, not a promise about Vance, and a category says nothing about flood risk anyway.
Then the name. AP reported that social media users joked about it, and explained: Vance just happened to be next on a list of Pacific storm names devised by the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations' weather agency.
The lists are reused every six years, so the next Vance comes in 2032. A 2014 Vance, "a rare November category 2 hurricane," dissipated before reaching southwestern Mexico.
What to check in Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo and the Acapulco area
As of Saturday, The Rio Times said its sources did not mention airport closures or flight cancellations. Official sources come first.
- Read the NHC text, not the category: the rainfall and surf paragraphs, refreshed at 3 and 9 a.m. and p.m. CST. The next full advisory is at 9 a.m. CST Sunday (1500 UTC).
- Check Mexico's national weather service (SMN, at smn.conagua.gob.mx), the "local weather office" NHC says to consult for surf (which in Mexico means SMN, according to The Rio Times), for its Pacific tropical cyclone notice and local rain forecasts.
- Follow civil protection: the national coordination (CNPC) says to stay off beaches in high surf and not to cross flooded streets, rivers or streams, and your state unit issues local notices. Jalisco's was numbering its bulletins, per NNC.
- Respect beach flags. The National Weather Service advises: "Only swim at a beach with lifeguards."
- Stay off steep roads and river crossings during heavy rain. NHC's advice: "Turn Around Don't Drown."
- Check airline and hotel notices before travel, and skip name-joke posts for forecasts.
Post by @conagua_clima
Saturday's post from Conagua Clima, Mexico's national weather service account, forecasting heavy rain for parts of Guerrero, Michoacán, Colima and Jalisco.
Jalisco's civil protection unit put the closest approach at midnight on Oct. 29, about 83 km from Cihuatlán, according to NNC on Saturday. That was before NHC moved its track west again. An editor's calculation from NHC's positions puts the forecast center at 0600 UTC Thursday roughly 125 miles (200 km) from Cihuatlán.
NHC's last forecast point is Friday, Oct. 30, post-tropical, near 20.7N 106.9W, about 108 miles due west of Puerto Vallarta by Daybreak Wire's calculation. NHC's day-five track error averages about 144 miles, larger than that gap, so offshore is a forecast and not a guarantee. The rain window runs through Thursday, Oct. 29. The next advisory lands at 9 a.m. CST.
