Hurricane Celia, the first of the 2010 Pacific season, strengthened Wednesday into a major Category Three storm south of Mexico, while another potential hurricane was churning in Celia's wake, US officials said.
Packing sustained winds near 185 kilometers (115 miles) per hour with higher gusts, Celia was some 1,180 kilometers south of Cabo San Lucas on the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula at 2100 GMT Wednesday, with no threat posed to coastlines, the US-based National Hurricane Center said.
The storm, a Category Three on the one-to-five Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale, was moving westward, away from land, at about 20 kilometers per hour and was expected to track to the west-northwest in the coming days.
On Celia's heels is Tropical Storm Darby, about 1,500 kilometers to the east, and experts forecast it gaining strength and shifting northward towards the Mexican coast west of the popular resort city of Acapulco by Monday.
Darby was generating winds of 100 kilometers per hour with higher gusts, and was traveling at 19 kilometers per hour.
"Additional strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours and Darby could become a hurricane on Thursday," the hurricane center said.
The other major storm to strike the Pacific so far this season was Tropical Storm Agatha, which slammed into Guatemala in May, unleashing heavy rains and floods that left some 275 people dead or missing across Central America.
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