Hurricane Patricia, one of the strongest ever, crashed into western Mexico yesterday with rain and winds of up to 165 mph, hammering coastal areas but skirting major cities and causing less damage than feared.
Mowing down trees, flooding streets and battering buildings, Patricia plowed into Mexico as a Category 5 storm on Friday evening before grinding inland. It rapidly lost power in the mountains that rise up along the Pacific coast and was downgraded to a tropical storm by yesterday morning.
Despite this downgrading, the storm still dumped torrential rains that the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) warned were "likely to produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides".
So far, it appeared that major damage had been averted because the powerful storm did not hit large population centres.
Around 15,000 tourists had been hurriedly evacuated from the beach resort of Puerto Vallarta as people scrambled to get away from the advancing hurricane, whose massive swirl over Mexico could be seen clearly from space.
"It sparked chaos here, it ruined a lot of things, took down the roof, lots of trees. Things are in a bad state where we work," said Domingo Hernandez, a hotel worker in the resort of Barra de Navidad near to the major port of Manzanillo.
Thousands of residents and tourists ended up in improvised shelters, but there were no early reports of fatalities and many felt they had escaped lightly.
The storm hit land near the area of Cuixmala, home to one of Mexico's most exclusive getaways, at 6:15 p.m. on Friday, the NHC said.
Cuixmala, located between the major port of Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta, has over the years played host to a colourful assortment of world leaders and eccentric billionaires.
At one point generating sustained winds of 200 mph , Patricia was the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.
Even though it lost some power before coming ashore, it was still a Category 5 storm, the strongest on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. Such storms are relatively rare and are capable of causing devastating destruction.
Even though it was weakening, Patricia was expected to produce total rainfall accumulations of 8 to 12 inches , with isolated maximum amounts of 20 inches , over the Mexican states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Michoacan, and Guerrero through the weekend.
In a brief televised address on Friday, President Enrique Pena Nieto urged Mexicans to take precautions, warning that the storm which weather forecasters had said could cause catastrophic damage still posed a serious risk.
"The initial reports confirm that damage has been less than would be expected of a hurricane of this magnitude," Pena Nieto said. "But we cannot lower our guard yet."
The government cautioned that ash and other material from the volcano of Colima, some 130 miles from Puerto Vallarta, could combine with heavy rainfall to trigger liquid cement-style mudflows that could smother villages.
The Mexican Red Cross said it had dispatched relief teams and trucks packed with humanitarian supplies ahead of the hurricane's landfall.
The strongest storm on record was Cyclone Tip which hit Japan in 1979.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here