Mexico’s President, Enrique Pena Nieto, has categorised Hurricane Patricia to two tropical storm, but warned that Patricia still poses as threats. Residents of the coast where Patricia came ashore last night describe an enraged sea crashing into hotels, scooping beach away from their foundations, and howling winds that toppled trees and telephone posts.
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“Rapid weakening is expected to continue, and Patricia is forecast to become a tropical depression later today and dissipate tonight”, the National Hurricane Center said.
Domingo Hernandez is a watchman at the Hotel Barra de Navidad in the resort village of the same name. By 7 a.m., the storm was moving north-northeast near 21 miles per hour to central and northeastern Mexico. He describes Patricia as the strongest storm he’s seen in a quarter century of living on the coast.
In the face of winds capable of lifting vehicles and sweeping structures from their bases, the popular holiday resort of Puerto Vallarta and the major port of Manzanillo on the Mexican south-west coast were braced for imminent devastation. He says mountains around the city “served as a barrier”.
There are early reports of a few flooding and landslides, but getting information out of the area is extremely hard because the power is off, including electricity to run cell towers.In Mexico, officials declared a state of emergency in dozens of municipalities in Colima, Nayarit and Jalisco states that contain the bustling port of Manzanillo and the posh resort of Puerto Vallarta.
Univision News reports that the governor of Colima, the state most affected by this storm, said that so far they had only received reports of “downed trees” and that they had received no reports of “victims or damage to the infrastructure”.
The strongest storm on record was Cyclone Tip which hit Japan in 1979.
HENRY ROMERO/REUTERS Children are shown in a shelter at the University of Puerto Vallarta on Friday. “Everyone is starting to perk up a little bit but still kind of on edge waiting to see what’s going to happen with the storm”. By night they were back where they began: at their hotel, and no worse for wear.
“It was pretty stressful for a while”, Tom Sokol said. With water temperatures about 2 to three degrees warmer than average, it was just enough of an injection of energy to tip Patricia to the power and scale it was recorded on Friday morning. More than 6,000 people died in Haiyan, due largely to enormous storm surges that rushed through coastal areas.
At one point generating sustained winds of 200 miles per hour (322 kph), Patricia was the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.
A few 400,000 people live in vulnerable areas, according to Mexico’s National Disaster Fund. Officials placed Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio under a flash flood watch until Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service.
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Much of the system’s precipitation could roll on into the Gulf of Mexico before making its way up to Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas, states already hit by heavy rains from another system.
