After the storm passed, people snapped selfies next to a seaside sculpture, and business owners swept sidewalks as they would on any morning.
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Just a day after menacing Mexico as one of history’s strongest storms, Hurricane Patricia left surprisingly little damage in its wake Saturday and quickly dissipated into a low-pressure system that posed little threat beyond heavy rain.
Thousands of residents and tourists are holed up in emergency shelters, many of them unable to communicate with their families. By night they were back where they began: at their hotel, and no worse for wear. “I felt guilty for taking my kids here”.
The storm weakened rapidly as it hit land, leaving little damage in Puerto Vallarta.
Patricia also threatens Texas with forecasters saying that even after the storm breaks, up its tropical moisture will likely feed heavy rains already soaking the state.
– The hurricane had a very narrow wind corridor.
It was a remarkable outcome, considering that Patricia had once been a Category 5 hurricane with winds up to 200 miles per hour (325 kph) before coming ashore with slightly less power in an area dotted with sleepy villages and a few upscale hotels.
“Strong winds and a lot of water”, Quintero said. Workers let them out to eat in a hotel restaurant after the city was not feeling any major effects from the storm two hours after landfall.
“They said they were taken really good care of, but it was just kind of insane because they went from having a wedding on a beach to being in a shelter with only what they could grab from their room”, Brian Bettner said.
Patricia caught the attention of the world by going from a tropical storm to Category 5 in less than two days.
The Mexican Pacific coast resort of Puerto Vallarta escaped unscathed as the most powerful hurricane recorded in the western hemisphere weakened before making landfall.
That was more powerful than the 315 kilometers per hour winds of Super Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,350 dead or missing when it struck the Philippines in November 2013. More than 4 million people were displaced and over 1 million houses were destroyed or damaged in 44 provinces in the central Visayas region, a large cluster of islands.
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However, parts of Texas were hit by flash floods as more than a foot of rain fell over the weekend, resulting in disruption to roads and causing Dallas Fort Worth airport to cancel flights. There were more than 650,000 in Colima state, and more than 161,000 in Manzanillo.
