Strongest hurricane in history!

[Magical Realist]

Patricia isn't messing around. Sustained winds of up to 200 mph----gusts up to 240. We haven't seen a storm like this before. This is tornado strength winds blowing everywhere. The damage to Mexico and Puerto Vallarta will be extreme. At least there is time to evacuate. Except for the crazy storm partiers. There's always some of those. Here's a before pic of Puerto Vallarta. Can anyone say "storm surge?"

[Image: puerto-vallarta-honeymoon-1024x682.jpg]

[elte]

I was similarly "blown away" by the strength of Patricia, and was thinking of the exact same comparison to tornadoes. It is tornado strength winds blowing all around the eye and outward some distance, yet equal to an F5 tornado. F5 is the highest category for tornadoes, though it is toward the bottom in the range. The thing I heard was its most powerful status applies to eastern Pacific storms.  Maybe they reassed it as the most powerful everywhere, yet even without it being more than the most powerful in the east Pacific, that still is very impressive strength indeed.  My opinion is, definitely go evacuate, since the buildings there likely were not built thinking of anything that powerful coming in from the ocean.  Storms on that side of the continent are generally know for being weaker than on the east side.

[Yazata]

Storm surge might really do a number to hotels built right on the beach like in MR's picture. Bring your surfboard!

200 miles per hour is pretty extreme. If that hits a populated area, it will be blowing buildings down and completely gutting the ones that remain standing, reducing them to shells. That's the tourist hotels. Many of the Mexican locals don't live in housing that substantial. This is going to cause lots of deaths, even if the eye comes ashore in a remote area with just a few villages. Whole areas will be cut off by floods and landslides and only helicopters will be able to get in after the storm moves on.

A good thing is that they are saying that the super extreme category 5 winds are right near the eye and only extend out a relatively short distance. So even though this thing is huge and will effect a large stretch of coast, the worst of it will probably be localized.

I'm kind of amazed by how quickly this thing appeared. They usually track hurricanes for many days as they approach shore, but this one seemingly appeared out of nowhere. At least nobody was talking about it on the US news. (Hey, it's in Mexico! Who cares?) Tourists in Puerto Vallarta are saying that the forecast was for thunderstorms. Then yesterday they were told it was a hurricane and advised to leave town. Then just a few hours later they were told it was too late and that they would have to shelter in place. They are being directed to buildings above the storm surge and being told to hide in interior bathrooms on the side away from the sea.

I'm still worried about the locals.

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The Weather Channel has a reporter in a small town about halfway between Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta, right where the eye is predicted to come ashore. The town is several miles inland on a hill and not right at the beach, which the reporter says he's not crazy enough to visit, that would be suicide.

The reporter says the town is a ghost town, all businesses are closed and many residents left for Guadalajara in buses yesterday. Some residents stayed and were nonchalant yesterday, saying they've seen plenty of hurricanes. But today they seem scared. Everyone is hiding in concrete buildings and places that seem reinforced.

There's fear that when this thing hits the mountains, it will dump ten or more inches of rain all at once and cause disastrous flash flooding.

Scary.

The Weather Channel says there's a hurricane hunter airplane out there right now flying through this and it clocked 200 mph sustained near the eye. (It must be hard to fly a plane through that.) The air pressure readings were as low as ever recorded in a storm. They just turned around and are going back in. (Who pays their salaries? They deserve a bonus!)

[elte]

The barometric pressure is the second lowest ever recorded, but the wind speed is the highest ever recorded anywhere in a typhoon or hurricane, according to KTLA.

[elte]

I was glad it weakened to 160 mph at landfall. Still devastating, causing a lot of suffering though. If I recall that the power is proportional to the square of the wind speed, then that is somewhat less than a division of the strength by a factor of two.

[C C]

AGGREGATED NEWS SUMMARY:

Patricia came ashore on a sparsely populated stretch of coast with sustained winds of 165 mph (266 kph), and it rapidly lost power as it moved over mountains and by Saturday afternoon had dissipated into a rainstorm heading toward Texas. It caused less damage than feared on Mexico's Pacific coast on Saturday, but hammered an isolated part of the shoreline dotted with luxury villas and fishing villages, where the storm landed. There were no early reports of deaths and it appeared major damage was averted [...] Experts said the storm's speed meant it did not saturate the ground and trigger the major flooding feared. It was then broken up by high mountains, limiting the damage.

Mexico's Tourism Secretary Enrique de la Madrid says major resorts like Puerto Vallarta had had "extraordinary luck" in avoiding damage from the once immensely powerful storm. He says mountains around the city "served as a barrier." Puerto Vallarta heaved a collective sigh of relief Saturday morning to find itself largely unscathed by Patricia. People snapped selfies next to an iconic sculpture overlooking the sea and business owners swept sidewalks as they would on any morning. There were puddles downtown, but nothing more than a passing thunderstorm might leave. Maximiliano Macedo of Puerto Vallarta strolled arm in arm with his wife down the waterfront unable to resist the curiosity of seeing things by the light of day. In his words, "Fortunately, nothing happened here."

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. Domingo Hernandez is a watchman at the Hotel Barra de Navidad in the resort village of the same name. He says "waves were coming into the hotel," and adds that "All the streets here in town are full of downed trees all over the place." He describes Patricia as the strongest storm he's seen in a quarter century of living on the coast.

Mexico's government says Hurricane Patricia damaged between 3,000 and 3,500 houses after it swept ashore as a powerful Category 5 storm. President Enrique Pena Nieto said Saturday night that about 3,500 hectares (about 8,650 acres) also had been affected by the storm. He said 235,000 people had lost electricity when the storm made landfall Friday evening on the Pacific coast of Jalisco state. Power has been restored to about half of those.

The storm carved through small rural villages, ripping corrugated metal roofing off modest brick homes and uprooting trees, with the forceful winds sucking the leaves off them. "I've lost everything, I don't even have anywhere to sleep," said Roberto Gonzalez, a farmer, as he salvaged belongings from mangled debris of trash, toys and branches strewn across his hamlet of Chamela near the coast of Jalisco state, which took a direct hit. His mattress was tossed about 20 feet (6 meters) away from his house. A hole gaped where his roof used to sit. Power lines were knocked down in some of the worst damage electricity board repairmen had ever seen. Around three-quarters of some 50 modest homes in Chamela were wrecked. Residents had been evacuated to a shelter. Phone lines remain down where the storm hit in the nearby settlement of Cuixmala, the site of one of Mexico's most exclusive getaways located between Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta. It was unclear how bad the situation was there.