Residential

What Hurricane Rachel Taught Us in Manzanillo

By Fernando Loría — Chief Executive Officer, Hurricane Solution · October 8, 2026

There's a difference between Vallarta and Manzanillo that barely made it into this week's headlines. While Vallarta sat north of the Tropical Storm Watch area for Rachel, Manzanillo was inside the Tropical Storm Warning. The center of the hurricane never came close to the Colima coast, and yet the port was closed, the beaches were closed, and in El Paraíso, in Armería, the sea once again pounded homes that Polo had already damaged a week earlier.

I believe Manzanillo left lessons that apply to any oceanfront tower or restaurant on the Pacific, and I want to lay them out here.

In this article, I explain:

What it means to be inside a Tropical Storm Warning when the hurricane passes far offshore.
Why, in an oceanfront condominium, protection is everyone's problem.
What role salt air plays in whether a system works on the day it's needed.
What to protect first when time runs short.

What happened in Colima this week

Based on data from the morning of September 30:

Mexico's Navy (SEMAR) placed Rachel about 375 km (233 mi) west-southwest of Manzanillo, by then a Category 1 hurricane.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) had a Tropical Storm Warning in effect from Punta San Telmo to Playa Pérula, a stretch that includes Manzanillo.
The National Meteorological Service (SMN) forecast winds of 50 to 70 km/h (31 to 43 mph) for the Colima coast, with gusts of 70 to 90 km/h (43 to 56 mph), rainfall of 75 to 150 mm (3 to 6 in), and waves of 4 to 6 meters (13 to 20 ft).
The Regional Harbor Master's Office closed the port to navigation, and Civil Protection closed the beaches in Manzanillo, Tecomán, and Armería.
On Monday alone, before Rachel became a hurricane, Manzanillo had already recorded 64.7 mm of rain.

Colima's Civil Protection office pointed out something I consider important: although Rachel would pass farther away than Polo, its cloud bands were wider and could bring more rain. The distance to the center doesn't tell you everything about what the coast is going to experience.

A Warning and a Watch don't call for the same thing

Many people use the two terms interchangeably. For a property, they call for different actions:

Tropical Storm Watch: conditions are possible in the area, generally within 48 hours. It's time to get ready.
Tropical Storm Warning: conditions are expected somewhere within the area, generally within 36 hours. It's time to deploy, and to finish before the wind makes that impossible.

Manzanillo was under a Warning. That means that, with the hurricane nearly 400 km away, authorities expected tropical storm conditions somewhere along that coastline. For a tower with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the ocean, gusts of 80 or 90 km/h are enough to pick up lounge chairs and planters and hurl them into the glass.

In a condominium, protection is a collective decision

This is the lesson from Manzanillo that interests me most, because the city has many condominium towers facing Manzanillo Bay and Santiago Bay, in Salahua, Las Brisas, and on the peninsula.

A building withstands wind better when it's sealed. If one unit leaves its windows unprotected and that glass fails, the wind gets in, pressurizes the unit, and can spread into hallways, ducts, and neighboring units. The problem is that in many condominiums each owner decides on their own, and quite a few spend the season out of town.

To illustrate, here is a pattern we've seen repeat itself (I'm sharing it as an illustrative case, without names):

Two towers on the same bay receive the same Warning.
In the first, management activates its plan: staff clear the furniture from the terraces, deploy protection on the ocean-facing façades, and finish by mid-afternoon.
In the second, each owner decides. Several units are left as they were, with lounge chairs outside and windows uncovered.
The next morning, the first tower only has to take everything down, rinse it, and store it. In the second, a lounge chair from an upper floor shattered the window of a unit below, and water reached the hallway and two neighboring units.

The storm was the same for both. What changed was that one had a collective decision and the other didn't. That's why I recommend that condominium associations write into their bylaws a minimum protection standard for exposed façades and a requirement to remove outdoor furniture whenever a Warning is issued.

Salt air works all year long

A protection system in Manzanillo spends eleven months stored facing the sea and a few hours actually working. In my experience, many systems don't fail for lack of strength; they fail because they reach hurricane day with corroded anchors, seized threads, or fabric degraded by the sun.

When we inspect a coastal installation, these are the points we look at:

Anchor and bolt material. In a marine environment, the right grade of stainless steel and protected inserts keep corrosion from weakening the attachment.
Protecting the anchor when the system isn't mounted. In our installations, the anchor stays in the façade with the stainless bolt in place so dirt can't get in, and the head is barely noticeable.
UV resistance of the fabric. It determines whether the material retains its strength after several seasons.
Cleaning. Salt buildup on tracks and anchors should be rinsed off with fresh water at least once a season and after every deployment.

One project taught us a great deal about this. An all-white luxury condominium needed protection in the same color, and the white systems on the market degraded in the sun and stained easily. It took us a while to solve, but we ended up with a different base material, reinforced with high-strength thread, that doesn't get dirty easily and retains its strength. That development is now our HS-1250.

What to protect first when time runs short

If the next Warning arrives and there isn't time to cover everything, the order matters more than the quantity. For an oceanfront property in Colima, this is the order I would follow:

Panoramic windows and glass façades facing the ocean.
Sliding doors to terraces and balconies, which are the most common point of water intrusion.
Beach-level entrances (lobby, restaurant, and common areas), where wind and surf converge.
Mechanical rooms, storage rooms, and electrical panels, because without them reopening gets delayed.
Side windows and sheltered façades.

And before any of that, remove anything the wind can lift from terraces and rooftops. In oceanfront towers, a good share of the objects that strike windows come from the terraces of the same building or the one next door. It's the cheapest measure and one of the most effective.

What a storm that doesn't hit still costs

For a hotel or a vacation-rental condominium, the cost of a week like this one shows up in unsold room nights, cancellations, maintenance overtime, and repairs to finishes.

An illustrative example, with estimated figures: a 120-room hotel with an average daily rate of MXN 2,800 and 65% occupancy generates roughly MXN 218,000 a day in room revenue. If wind-driven rain takes 15 rooms out of service for four days, the direct loss approaches MXN 110,000, before counting carpets, paint, and labor. If the problem is a broken window, that room can stay out of inventory for several weeks while the replacement glass arrives.

Polo and Rachel passed off the Colima coast a week apart. A hotel without a pre-installed system paid the cost of improvising twice.

Checklist: questions for your building management or your provider

Does our building have a minimum protection standard for every unit with an ocean-facing façade?
Do our bylaws require removing outdoor furniture when a Warning is issued?
What are our anchors made of, and when did someone last inspect them?
Does the fabric or panel retain its strength after several seasons of sun?
Who rinses and inspects the system after each use?
What impact level is it certified to, and under what file number?

In summary

Manzanillo was inside the Tropical Storm Warning even though Rachel passed nearly 400 km away.
The SMN forecast gusts of up to 90 km/h, rainfall of up to 150 mm, and waves of up to 6 meters in Colima.
In condominiums, a single unprotected unit can affect the entire building.
Salt air and sun determine what condition the system is in on hurricane day.
Removing furniture from terraces and rooftops is the cheapest measure and one of the most effective.

Manzanillo understands this risk better than almost any port on the Pacific, from the 1959 hurricane to the ones that made landfall very close by on the Costalegre. What Rachel added this week was a reminder that the cumulative damage from storms that pass nearby also counts, and that it can be reduced significantly through collective decisions and simple maintenance.