The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that two sisters, aged 13 and 7, died Friday in the Oaxaca state community of Pluma Hidalgo when a mudslide collapsed their home. The girls’ mother was also reportedly badly injured in the mudslide but is expected to survive.

In addition to the tragic fatalities it caused, Carlotta knocked down power lines and washed out some coastal roads, leaving dozens of communities without cellular service or electricity and unreachable by land.

Carlotta hit the southern Mexican coast as a Category 1 hurricane on Friday and strengthened to a Category 2 shortly after, but weakened in the night to a Category 1 upon making landfall before being downgraded Saturday morning to a tropical storm and later to a tropical depression.

“The rains were very heavy on Friday, but this morning, there is decreased cloud cover as the storm faded,” a civil protection official said.

Since Carlotta’s downgrade, the U.S. National Hurricane says the Mexican government has discontinued all warnings and watches related to the storm.

Fox News reports that for the current hurricane season in the Pacific Ocean, which began May 15 and ends Nov. 30, the National Meteorological Service (SMN) has forecast the formation of 13 hurricanes.

Forecasters have also predicted 13 hurricane-force storms for the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, which kicked-off on July 1st.

Hurricane Carlotta Kills 2 in Mexico Before Being Downgraded to a Tropical Depression is a post from: The Inquisitr

Carlotta, which first formed as a tropical depression late Wednesday night about 515 miles, south-southeast of Puerto Angel, Mexico, is currently about 120 miles off the country’s coast and is moving to the northwest with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph.

According to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, the center of the storm should move near or over the coast late tonight or early tomorrow and Carlotta may become a Category 2 storm as it nears land.

“Carlotta appears to be undergoing rapid intensification and is likely to continue until the center (of the storm) moves near or over the Mexican coast in 18 hours or so,” the NHC posted at 11am EST.

The agency forecasts a dangerous storm surge and as much as 12 inches of rain that may cause flash-floods and mudslides in the Mexican states of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas.

As a result, the Mexican government has issued hurricane watches and warnings (which means that hurricane conditions are expected) from Punta Maldonado to Acapulco, and a watch (which means that hurricane conditions are possible) is in effect from Acapulco to Tecpan De Galeana.

Carlotta is the first hurricane and the third named storm of the 2012 Pacific hurricane season.

The Weather Channel has more on Hurricane Carlotta and its projected path in the video below:

Hurricane Carlotta Heads Towards Mexico’s Pacific Coast [Video] is a post from: The Inquisitr