Hurricane Otis has been declared the strongest to make landfall in Mexico, surpassing Hurricane Patricia in 2015 and becoming the first Category 5 major hurricane to make landfall from the Eastern North Pacific since records began.

The rapid development of Otis took forecasters by surprise, as it rapidly developed from a tropical storm off the coast to intensify before it made landfall near Acapulco on Mexico’s west coast. By this time, it had maximum sustained wind speeds of 165mph.

James Cosgrove, senior modeler on the event response team at Moody’s RMS, said: “The remarkable and monumental ‘miss’ or ‘bust’ by all the weather models to identify the onset and magnitude of Otis’ intensification will have had serious implications for preparations and evacuations in Acapulco and the surrounding areas on Mexico’s west coast.

“While hurricane warnings were issued 24 hours before landfall, this was when the forecasts called for a Category 1 landfall. Only within twelve hours of landfall did the forecast landfall intensity increase to a Category 4 major hurricane.

“The full extent of the wind, storm surge, and rainfall damage in Guerrero will emerge over the coming days. Nevertheless, Hurricane Otis provides a new data point for studying rapid intensification, and one that will need to be learned from for the future.”

Meanwhile, an initial report by Gallagher Re suggests that Otis – which is so far known to have claimed 48 lives – could cost insurers multi-billion dollar losses, with an anticipated economic loss of over US$10bn, including direct damage and net loss business interruption from the impact on property, infrastructure and industry. The previous most costly Mexican hurricane landfall was Wilma in 2005 which led to an estimated economic loss of US$11.3bn.

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