Record-breaking Hurricane Patricia weakens to tropical storm as it batters Mexico
No reports of fatalities, but nation's president warns 'we cannot led down our guard yet'
Record-breaking Hurricane Patricia was pushing rapidly inland over mountainous western Mexico yesterday, after weakening to tropical storm force while dumping torrential rains that authorities warned could cause deadly floods and mudslides.
Patricia, which earlier had peaked as the strongest hurricane on record in the Western Hemisphere, made landfall on Friday on a sparsely populated stretch of Mexico's Pacific coast as a Category 5 storm, avoiding direct hits on the resort city of Puerto Vallarta and major port city of Manzanillo.
There were reports of some flooding and landslides, but no word of fatalities or major damage as the storm pushed across inland mountains while bypassing the metropolis of Guadalajara overnight.
Residents along the coast where Patricia came ashore last night described an enraged sea that crashed into hotels, scooping beaches away from their foundations, and howling winds that toppled trees and telephone posts.
"The waves were coming into the hotel," said Domingo Hernandez, a watchman at the Hotel Barra de Navidad in the resort village of the same name in Jalisco state. "All the streets here in town are full of downed trees all over the place," said Hernandez, who said Patricia was the strongest storm he had seen in 25 years of living on the coast. "You have to make your way around all the downed telephone poles, the power lines, the trees."