March is on record as the driest month of the year in Jalisco, meteorologists say. Tlaloc, the Aztec rain God, obviously thought it was time for that stat to change.
Last Sunday and Monday’s all-day downpours exceeded the average rainfall for the whole of March by a whopping 300 percent, according to Angel Meulenert Peña of the Universidad de Guadalajara’s Astronomy and Meteorology Institute.
Meulenert pointed out that rain is usually so scarce in the third month of the year that in 2010 not a single drop was reported anywhere in Jalisco.
The worst affected part of the state was the municipality of Tomatlan, where 1,500 people were forced to evacuate their flooded homes.
Landslides on the Mascota-Las Palmas-Puerto Vallarta highway caused major traffic delays, while hundreds of pilgrims heading for the annual religious celebrations in Talpa de Allende found their journeys curtailed.
Due to the worsening climate, the Nevado de Colima national park closed access to visitors from Saturday morning. The extinct volcano had a good coating of snow on the summit and had been attracting a sizable number of daytrippers.
In Puerto Vallarta, emergency personnel evacuated parts of two neighborhoods – Getzemani and Las Juntas – bordering the Rio Ameca when the river broke its banks. Flooding also prompted the occupants of some 20 properties to leave their homes in Autlan, where a man drowned after being caught in a raging torrent of water.
In Guadalajara, a 40-year-old woman was gravely injured after a tree fell on her as she walked along a street to one side of the IMSS Centro Medico hospital.
Although Monday, March 16 was a national holiday marking Benito Juarez’s birthday, few cyclists were brave enough to challenge the rain and head out on the Via RecreActiva, the car-free activity that had been extended for an extra day. Streets were closed to traffic and barriers set up, meaning dozens of volunteers spent six hours miserably exposed to the wet conditions with virtually nothing to do.
There was some good news, however, the National Water Commission reported that the level of Lake Chapala rose by two centimeters during the brief rainy period.
However, Guadalajara city hall said the unusual rains increased the appearance of potholes by an estimated 25 percent.