Hotels

What Hurricane Rachel Taught Us in Vallarta

By Fernando Loría — Chief Executive Officer, Hurricane Solution · October 2, 2026

On Wednesday, September 30, shortly after midnight, Rachel became a hurricane about 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Puerto Vallarta. By morning, the question coming up again and again in the news and on social media around the bay was the same one: is it going to hit us? The forecast said no, and for most people that answer settled it.

For anyone who runs a hotel or looks after an oceanfront property, I think the useful question was a different one. Rachel never entered the bay, but it left several lessons worth writing down while they are fresh, because the Pacific season stays open until November 30.

In this article I cover:

What it actually means when a hurricane passes “offshore.”
Why the orientation of your windows on Banderas Bay changes your level of risk.
When a hotel should deploy its protection, and why that moment comes sooner than it seems.
What I would do this week with the information Rachel left us.

What happened with Rachel, by the numbers

Before drawing conclusions, it helps to be clear on the numbers. According to the National Hurricane Center (NHC) advisory on the morning of September 30:

Rachel was about 350 km southwest of Cabo Corrientes and, according to Mexico’s Navy (SEMAR), about 403 km southwest of Puerto Vallarta.
It had sustained winds of 140 km/h (87 mph) and was moving northwest at 17 km/h.
The forecast called for rapid intensification, with a chance of reaching major hurricane status in a day or a little more.
Its track was carrying it away from the mainland, with a turn to the west and a pass south of Baja California.
A tropical storm warning was in effect from Punta San Telmo to Playa Pérula, with a watch from Playa Pérula to Cabo Corrientes. Vallarta sat just north of that zone.

In short, it was a strong system that passed far away. Even so, Civil Protection kept watch along the coast, the University of Guadalajara suspended classes at its campuses in the region, and the National Meteorological Service (SMN) forecast up to 150 mm (6 in) of rain for Vallarta and waves of 4 to 6 meters (13 to 20 ft) along the Jalisco coast.

“Offshore” has a 260-kilometer radius

When we hear that a hurricane is passing offshore, we tend to picture a point moving along far from the coast. In reality, a hurricane is a system hundreds of kilometers across.

In Rachel’s case, hurricane-force winds extended up to 35 km from the center, but tropical-storm-force winds (63 km/h and up) reached out to 260 km. With the center about 350 km from Cabo Corrientes, the edge of that wind field was less than 100 km from the coast. A small deviation, or the system growing as it intensified, would have changed conditions in the bay considerably.

There are also three risks that don’t depend on the eye coming close:

Gusts in the rain bands. The advisory reports sustained wind, but glass breaks under gusts lasting a few seconds that coincide with a loose object in the air.
Wind-driven rain. When water travels almost horizontally, it gets in through sliding-door tracks and seals that perform fine in normal rain. This is the damage that takes the most rooms out of service in events that “didn’t hit.”
The ocean. Businesses along the Malecón had already put out sandbags a week earlier, when Polo went by. With Rachel, the surf rose again even though the wind on land was moderate.

The view that sells the room is the most exposed opening

For me, this is the lesson most specific to Vallarta. Many of the hotels and condominiums in the Hotel Zone, the Romantic Zone, and Conchas Chinas have their largest windows facing west and southwest, because that’s where the sunset is. Rachel passed exactly to the southwest.

That means the surf, the rain, and the gusts came in against the face of the building with the most glass, the most exposed surface, and the highest replacement cost. And when one of those openings fails, wind gets inside and pressurizes the room or the corridor. That internal pressure adds to the external suction on roofs and walls, and a broken window can turn into a larger structural problem.

When I assess a property on the bay, I start with that façade. What matters isn’t so much how many windows the building has as which ones face the direction cyclones tend to come from.

Lidia reminded us how much a forecast can change in a day

Vallarta has good reasons to feel relatively protected. The Sierra Madre and the shape of the bay helped during Patricia in 2015, and Mexico’s Ministry of Tourism acknowledged as much publicly at the time.

But in October 2023, Lidia intensified to Category 4 in less than a day and made landfall near Las Peñitas, about 120 km south of Vallarta, with sustained winds of 220 km/h. Reports from those days describe businesses boarding up windows just hours before landfall and people caught off guard by how quickly everything changed.

For Rachel, the NHC was forecasting similarly rapid intensification, though far from the coast. Put those two facts together and the practical conclusion is that a hurricane plan in Vallarta has to work with hours of notice, not days.

The clock that matters: tropical-storm-force winds

The rule I repeat most often to maintenance teams is simple: installation has to be finished before tropical-storm-force winds arrive, not before the hurricane arrives. Working on balconies, ladders, or rooftops in 60 km/h gusts is dangerous for staff and produces poor installations.

For a hotel, I would organize it into three levels:

Readiness. There’s an active cyclone that could affect the area, like Rachel this week. Check anchors, count the inventory of fabric screens or panels, confirm who is trained, and clear loose furniture from terraces and rooftops.
Partial deployment. The area goes under a watch or the forecast moves closer. Protect the large ocean-facing windows and ground-floor sliding doors first.
Full deployment. A tropical storm or hurricane warning is issued. The entire building envelope is protected, and staff pull back before the wind makes outdoor work unsafe.

One example we use often is a 2,500-room hotel with nine-story buildings that needed to be protected in a single day. Moving thousands of screens around the property under those conditions was impossible, so the solution was to store each screen rolled up and anchored at the top of its own balcony. When a threat comes, all it takes is unrolling it and anchoring it at the bottom, in about 3 to 5 minutes per room. What solved the problem was having the protection where it was needed before it was needed.

Impact glass: what it protects and what it doesn’t

It’s the question I get most from property owners in Vallarta, and the honest answer has nuances.

Certified impact glass is designed so that a projectile doesn’t get through the opening. Tests such as those under the ASTM E1996 standard evaluate whether the system stays closed after the impact and after pressure cycling. A pane can crack and still pass. That protects people, which is its main purpose. For a hotel, however, it leaves three problems:

Cracked glass has to be replaced, and for large panels that can take weeks in the region (I say that as an estimate based on what we’ve seen, not as published data).
The room comes out of inventory until the replacement arrives.
Seals and window frames remain exposed to wind-driven rain.

Exterior protection takes the impact before the glass does and reduces the direct pressure on the window. For large ocean-facing windows, combining the two is the most conservative configuration. For small windows on sheltered façades, impact glass alone may be enough.

Checklist: questions for your team or your supplier

If Rachel left you with doubts about your property, these are the questions I would ask this week:

What are our three largest southwest-facing openings, and how long would it take us to protect them?
How long did deployment actually take us last time? Did anyone time it?
Is our protection stored near where it gets installed, or does it have to be moved through the whole building?
Who is trained to install it today, and who covers if that person isn’t here?
What impact level is our system rated for, and where is the file number for that test?
Where did water get in during this week’s rain, even if it was only a little?

In summary

Rachel passed far from Vallarta, but its tropical-storm-force wind field had a 260 km radius and brought rain, surf, and gusts.
On the bay, southwest-facing façades concentrate the risk because that’s where the largest windows are.
In 2023, Lidia showed that a cyclone can go from tropical storm to Category 4 in less than a day.
Protection has to be fully installed before 63 km/h winds arrive.
Impact glass protects people; exterior protection also protects the hotel’s operation.

A cyclone that passes far away gives us the chance to review the plan without paying the price of a direct hit. I would use these days to write down how long the team took, what was missing, and which doors let water in, and turn that list into the first project before the next system arrives.