Hurricane Patricia-the strongest hurricane ever recorded-made landfall on Friday without causing the catastrophic damage that many had anticipated.
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“When Patricia went from a tropical storm to a major Hurricane, it was in an environment absolutely ideal for rapid intensification”, Feltgen said.
Jalisco Gov. Aristóteles Sandoval said late Friday that 6,333 people were in shelters.
The low-pressure system dissipated further, but continued delivering torrential rain on vulnerable communities as it traveled over Mexico’s mountains. Maria Pavon, a Cuixmala reservations booker based in the inland city of Colima, said there were no guests staying when the storm hit as they all been evacuated. It could dissipate by Saturday night. “But like they said it would be? No”.
Saturday morning, Bast said everything was good.
The rugged terrain of Mexico has forced Patricia to rapidly weaken since it made landfall on Friday evening. By mid-morning on Saturday morning it had been downgraded to a tropical depression with its maximum winds down to about 35 miles per hour (55 kph), the Miami-based Hurricane Center said.
Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto leads a meeting with members of the government as a satellite image of Hurricane Patricia is displayed on screens in Mexico City. Categorization continues to decrease until a storm loses hurricane classification and becomes a tropical storm (wind speeds between 39 to 73 miles per hour).
A hurricane warning was also in effect for the beach resort of Puerto Vallarta.
Carla Torres and her family sought refuge there in the afternoon, fearful of what Patricia might do to her home located just two blocks from a river in an area vulnerable to high winds.
A truck drives through a flooded out turn off at the entrance to the city after heavy flooding from Hurriane Patricia October 24, 2015 in Tecoman, Colima, Mexico. Considerable rainfall could produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides.
It means millions of people are under threat. Officials said the bus station was reopening.
“Some people in our area boarded up their windows with plywood, a few people put tape on”.
There were no early reports of deaths and it appeared major damage was averted as Patricia missed tourist centres like Puerto Vallarta and the major cargo port of Manzanillo, according to Reuters.
“The magnitude and danger of this hurricane threatened to cause more considerable damage, but fortunately this did not happen”, he said.
Patricia is special, in part because of the weather phenomenon known as El Niño.
This year’s El Niño, an unusually warm phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation that creates a band of warm water near the equator, was ranked as one of the strongest on record and is largely to blame for the enormity of the storm.
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“Right now, there’s an area of low pressure forming along the Texas coastline on Saturday and tomorrow, and it’s already been raining there thanks to another front”, he said.
