At least 28 people have died in Mexico on Thursday 9 and Friday 10 October 2025, as Tropical Storm Raymond has moved up the east coast of the country. Thirty one of the country's thirty two states have been affected by storm-related incidents, although the State of Hidalgo, to the north of Mexico City, has been the worst hit, with several rivers bursting their banks due to high rainfall, leading to 16 known deaths, and more than a thousand homes, as well as 59 medical centres and 308 schools, being impacted by flooding. A further nine deaths have been reported in the neighbouring State of Puebla, which lies to the south and east of Mexico city, with another thirteen people missing, and a gas pipeline fractured by a landslide. In the State of Veracruz, on the coast to the east of Hidalgo and Pueblo, at least two people have died, including a police officer and child caught in a landslide.
Tropical storms are caused by the warming effect of the Sun over tropical seas. As the air warms it expands, causing a drop in air pressure, and rises, causing air from outside the area to rush in to replace it. If this happens over a sufficiently wide area, then the inrushing winds will be affected by centrifugal forces caused by the Earth's rotation (the Coriolis effect). This means that winds will be deflected clockwise in the northern hemisphere and anti-clockwise in the southern hemisphere, eventually creating a large, rotating Tropical Storm.
Despite the obvious danger of winds of this speed, which can physically blow people, and other large objects, away as well as damaging buildings and uprooting trees, the real danger from these storms comes from the flooding they bring. Each drop millibar drop in air-pressure leads to an approximate 1 cm rise in sea level, with big tropical storms capable of causing a storm surge of several meters. This is always accompanied by heavy rainfall, since warm air over the ocean leads to evaporation of sea water, which is then carried with the storm. These combined often lead to catastrophic flooding in areas hit by tropical storms.
See also...
