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Hurricane Patricia weakens after slamming into Mexico’s coast

October 24, 2015 at 5:45 a.m. EDT

Hurricane Patricia, packing the strongest hurricane winds ever recorded, weakened overnight to a Category 1 storm as it moved inland over southwestern Mexico, according to the National Hurricane Center. The hurricane is expected to become a tropic storm later today, but could still produce heavy rains that cause flash floods and mudslides, the center warned.

“Even though Patricia is weakening quickly, strong and damaging winds at higher elevations could persist through this morning,’’ the center’s 4 a.m. forecast said.

As a Category 5 storm, Patricia smashed Friday evening into Mexico’s south­western coast, a region best known for its beaches and the resort city of Puerto Vallarta. But it sidestepped any direct hits on the city and the major port city of Manzanillo, according to the Associated Press.

There was no word of fatalities or major damage, though some television stations showed images of toppled trees and footage of vehicles being swept by floodwaters in the state of Jalisco, AP reported.

In the tense hours before the storm landed with 160-mph winds, schools closed and temporary shelters opened from Puerto Vallarta to Manzanillo along the Pacific Coast. Ships were ordered to return to port, and airports were shuttered.

People were plunged into darkness, too, as Mexico’s state-run electric utility announced that it was cutting power ahead of landfall as a precaution. The storm came ashore about 55 miles west-northwest of Manzanillo, a commercial seaport.

With the Category 5 storm bearing down, social media filled with video snippets of foamy surf and empty beaches being lashed by high winds. A live TV broadcast in Mexico showed a reporter struggling to stay on her feet as the storm landed, with two men helping prop her up. Early reports of damage were fleeting, with several hours of dangerous weather still to come.

Tens of thousands of U.S. citizens, many of them vacationers, were hunkering down or had evacuated, according to the State Department.

Patricia was described as "potentially catastrophic" by the U.S. National Hurricane Center, which measured top wind speeds at 200 mph using its Hurricane Hunter plane, which took measurements within the fierce storm as it neared Mexico. That speed approached what many scientists consider the theoretical limits of a hurricane's power.

Later, the hurricane center said it appeared that the storm had weakened somewhat while off the coast, to winds of 190 mph and then 160 mph.

At its peak, Patricia’s strength was off the charts at 8.3 on the 8.0 Dvorak storm intensity scale. Anything at 7.0 or above on the Dvorak scale is a Category 5 storm.

How Patricia stands above the four other most severe hurricanes in history

Maps: In the modern era of hurricane tracking, there has never been anything like Patricia

In addition to winds strong enough to strip bark from a tree, the hurricane packed the potential for an “extremely dangerous storm surge” and rainfall that could reach 20 inches in some places, the hurricane center said.

Forecasters noted that the destruction could be contained by the fact that the storm’s strongest winds were in a narrow band around its center, extending just five or 10 miles. Heavy rainfall was expected to be more widespread — eight to 12 inches along the coast, with more in isolated spots — in the Mexican states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Michoacan and Guerrero, leading to worries of flash floods and mudslides.

The hurricane could be a small tropical storm by Sunday.

In Acaponeta, Mexico, retired schoolteacher Enrique Jimenez Lopez sat tight with his family in his home 15 miles from the beach as they awaited the storm Friday evening. He had bought candles, as instructed by local authorities, in preparation for losing power. But, he said, people did not seem panicked or even overly worried about the fearsome storm.

“We know there are people in the street,” he said. “People just aren’t aware.”

The scene was calm, too, at a Red Cross shelter set up in an auditorium in Puetro Vallarta, where nearly 90 people waited for the storm.

"We have prepared a hot dinner — it's not cold," said Ali Nunez, a Red Cross medical worker, to ­illustrate the relaxed nature of emergency preparations. "I think people are a bit surprised about what they've heard about the hurricane."

The Puerto Vallarta municipality is home to 255,000 people.

Patricia began taking shape late Wednesday, morphing with historic speed from a series of thunderstorms into an unprecedented hurricane. In little over a day, it went from a Category 1 hurricane to a Category 4, and soon hit the top of the scale.

Hurricane records are a little cloudy because similar storms in the western Pacific — called cyclones and typhoons — are not as closely monitored. But it appears that Patricia is a record-setter at 200 mph. In 2013, Super Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines with peak winds estimated at 195 mph.

Patricia is certainly tops in North America or the Caribbean, the domain of the National Hurricane Center, besting the record of 190-mph winds from Hurricane Allen, which hit the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico in 1980.

Mexico is no stranger to hurricanes. In September 2014, Hurricane Odile smashed into the Baja California peninsula, causing several deaths, damaging hotels and cutting off water and electricity to tens of thousands of people. The government sent in the army to evacuate tourists who were stranded by damage to the local airport.

A year earlier, Hurricane Ingrid and Tropical Storm Manuel socked Mexico's gulf and Pacific coasts, causing flooding and landslides. At least 34 people died.

Patricia is the ninth storm to reach Category 4 or 5 in the northeast Pacific Ocean this year, beating the record of eight in 1997, according to Phillip Klotzbach, a meteorologist at Colorado State University.

The ingredients for a superstorm like Patricia are present. This year, there is a strong El Niño weather pattern, the periodic warming in sea surface temperature. That generally leads to hyperactive hurricane activity in the Eastern Pacific basin, Kerry Emanuel, an MIT hurricane ­expert, said by e-mail.

Pinning a single hurricane to a long-term trend such as global warming is more difficult, but record-setting hurricanes are consistent with predictions by climate researchers about the consequences of a warming world. Rising ocean temperatures should strengthen these storms. But the issue is beset by data-related difficulties, since storm measurement techniques are continually improving and highly variable.

The oceans heating up because of climate change will have consequences, said Michael Mann, a climate researcher at Penn State University. “Hurricane Patricia, and her unprecedented 200 mile-per-hour sustained winds, appears to be one of them now, unfortunately.”

Gabriela Martinez in Mexico City and Niraj Chokshi in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

Why record-breaking hurricanes like Patricia are expected on a warmer planet

10 years ago, Hurrricane Wilma had the most extreme intensification in Atlantic history

New study reveals the possibility of hurricanes "unlike anything you've seen in history"

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