“It’s awesome it went from the worst in history to just a few heavy rain”, Susanna Sokol, a USA tourist, tells the Associated Press. There were puddles downtown, but nothing more than a passing thunderstorm might leave.
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HECTOR GUERRERO/AFP/Getty Images People walk under the rain during the arrival of Hurricane Patricia in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on Friday.
[Updated] While it bears no danger at all to Bermuda, the people of Mexico are not so lucky, with Hurricane Patricia bearing down on them carrying maximum sustained winds of a staggering 305km/h [190mph], which numerous worldwide reports said makes it the strongest hurricane ever recorded. Patricia barreled toward southwestern Mexico Friday as a monster Category 5 storm, the stronges…
Hurricane Patricia grew at an “incredible rate” on Friday, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said. VIDEO: Relatives of Mexicans in hurricanes path pray for relatives Domingo Hernandez is a watchman at the Hotel Barra de Navidad in the resort village of the same name.
In his words, “Fortunately, nothing happened here”.
Patricia was 55km northeast of the north-central city of Zacatecas.
“As the outer wall of the hurricane swept over the coast at 6:15 p.m., the authorities reported trees being knocked down and landslides taking place along the road between the city of Colima and the port city of Manzanillo”. He describes Patricia as the strongest storm he’s seen in a quarter century of living on the coast.
“There are a few mountains that served as a barrier, and that at the end of the day is what prevented the winds from having to come through here”, he said of Vallarta.
Mexico’s Secretary of Tourism, Enrique de la Madrid, said major tourist resorts like Puerto Vallarta had had “extraordinary luck” in avoiding damage from the once immensely powerful storm.
Hurricane Patricia continues to weaken, dropping to a Category 1 storm as it crosses Mexico.
Patricia gradually lost steam as it moved further inland overnight and was downgraded to a tropical storm in the morning, with maximum sustained winds of 80km/h, according to the US National Hurricane Center.
But the storm was expected to produce up to 51cm of rain over the states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Michoacan, and Guerrero, which were likely to produce flash floods and mudslides, the centre said.
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The storm’s impact on land has been less severe than initially thought, but it still knocked down trees, flooded streets, and battered buildings, before rapidly losing power in the mountains that rise up along the Pacific coast.
