Tropical storm Paul heads for Mexico's Baja coast

MEXICO CITY, Oct 21 (Reuters) Tropical Storm Paul formed off Mexico's Pacific Coast today and headed toward the country's Baja California Peninsula, the US National Hurricane Center said.

The center forecast Paul would later become a hurricane.

Its charts showed the weather system passing near the tip of the desert peninsula popular with US tourists next week, before heading for the Mexican mainland across the narrow Sea of Cortez.

Hurricanes that enter the Sea of Cortez, surrounded on three sides by land, tend to fizzle out after running aground, posing no risk to the United States.

Paul was moving west with maximum winds near 65 kph and was expected to veer toward the peninsula and strengthen in coming days due to climatic factors including warm ocean currents, the hurricane center said.

The luxury resorts and golf courses of Los Cabos, on the tip of Baja California, which extends down from the US mainland, had two narrow hurricane escapes last month.

Hurricane Lane missed the resorts in mid-September before crashing into the mainland and leaving a path of destruction on the Pacific Coast. Two weeks earlier, Hurricane John forced tourists to flee the resorts but left them unharmed and killed three people further north on the peninsula.

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