Hurricane Lane threatens Mexican Pacific coast

MEXICO CITY, Sep 16 (Reuters) Hurricane Lane roared toward Mexico's Pacific coast after strengthening from a tropical storm, but it veered away from a luxury resort in Baja California popular with US tourists.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center predicted the Category 1 storm would come ashore tomorrow in northwestern Mexico without making a direct hit on the Los Cabos resort in Baja California.

The peninsula, which extends south from the U.S. state of California, is still reeling from Hurricane John, which killed at least three people when it struck earlier this month. A hurricane warning was in place for the peninsula's tip.

The hurricane center said Lane had maximum winds near 130 kph, and was about 450 km southeast of Cabo San Lucas on Friday afternoon. It was moving northwest at near 15 kph.

A Category 1 storm is at the low end of the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale and causes minimal damage.

Lane was expected to head into the Sea of Cortez separating the peninsula from Mexico's mainland. Hurricanes that enter the narrow stretch, surrounded on three sides by land, usually fizzle out as they run ashore, posing no danger to the United States.

The hurricane center expected Lane to remain just offshore for now, but said a slight turn could bring its center close to the mainland sooner than expected. The government had a hurricane watch in place from Manzanillo northward.

Hotels in the southern Baja California resorts of Cabo San Jose and Cabo San Lucas, which sent thousands of tourists packing but had a narrow escape when Hurricane John struck farther north, were optimistic they would be spared again.

''We're going to wait,'' said Gerardo Tovar, a receptionist at the luxury Melia hotel in Cabo San Lucas yesterday. ''If it turns into a strong hurricane, we will evacuate the whole hotel and put (guests) into a safe place.'' Still exhausted from John's passage, emergency workers in a peninsula that often faces multiple cyclones in a single season, reluctantly braced for the worst.

''We're all tired, but we're getting ready to face another one,'' said Jose Garcia Gajon, civil protection head for the state of southern Baja California.

''We're going to prepare as if it were going to hit, because with these things, you don't mess around.'' Reuters PDS VP0525