Monster hurricane makes landfall on Mexico’s Pacific coast

The strongest hurricane ever to threaten Mexico bore down on its central Pacific coast Friday with sustained winds of 200 miles per hour, sending tens of thousands of people fleeing toward the center of the nation.

Cars and buses jammed highways leading from the coastal cities of Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo, and lines of vehicles snaked out of gas stations to fill up for the trip to safety.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Hurricane Patricia was grinding toward a late afternoon landfall in Mexico with “potentially catastrophic” winds.

Patricia was a tropical storm on Thursday but mushroomed into a monstrous Category 5 hurricane overnight headed toward the states of Jalisco and Colima. The state of Nayarit was also in its path. The three coastal states are popular with U.S. tourists, many of whom were in the Puerto Vallarta area.

The hurricane’s sudden growth caught authorities off guard. While coastal evacuations began Thursday night, authorities said Friday the storm was so powerful that they would close highways in the early afternoon and force citizens to find shelter in sturdy buildings. Airlines canceled all flights from Puerto Vallarta.

Patricia’s landfall was expected between 5 and 6 p.m. local time (6 p.m. to 7 p.m. EDT) over Playa Pérula on the Jalisco coast, said Roberto Ramírez de la Parra, head of the National Water Commission, which oversees the meteorological agency.

“Some international experts consider this hurricane the most powerful hurricane that has ever existed on the planet,” Ramírez said. The hurricane carried gusts of up to nearly 240 miles per hour, he said.

Transport and Communications Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Esparza warned that sustained 200 mph winds would convert loose objects into lethal projectiles.

“They can easily move cars and trucks,” Ruiz said of the winds, adding that even poorly constructed buildings not made of concrete and steel would be blown down.

President Enrique Peña Nieto huddled with civil protection officials after advising that Hurricane Patricia was the strongest recorded storm in 50 years in waters off Mexico.

Police warned of possible landslides and flooding in the wake of heavy rains, forecast at more than seven inches. Rains were already falling on coastal areas in the early afternoon as the hurricane churned toward landfall at 10 miles per hour. The U.S. Embassy warned that some areas might receive as much as 20 inches of rainfall.

“These rains could produce life-threatening flash floods,” the embassy statement said.

Mexican authorities alerted citizens who did not evacuate to get off the streets and remain indoors throughout the three states, which have a combined population of 9 million people.

An American travel writer and blogger, Jeana Shandraw, whose website is surfandsunshine.com, was among thousands of evacuees streaming from the Puerto Vallarta area toward safety in central Mexico.

“There is a lot of congestion and going is extremely slow,” she said in an email. “Lots of cars headed out, but also a steady stream of emergency and government vehicles coming in.”

Some residents did not appear to be taking the storm seriously, she said.

A handful of guests refused to leave the CasaMagna Marriott resort in Puerto Vallarta where she had been staying, Shandraw said.

Authorities closed most ports in Jalisco, Nayarit, Michoacan, Guerrero and Oaxaca states to small boat traffic, including at the major ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas.

Jalisco Gov. Aristóteles Sandoval warned citizens to “secure the windows of your homes and take shelter in safe places.”

Mexico’s Baja Peninsula is still recovering from powerful Hurricane Odile, a Category 4 storm that hit in September 2014, killing 11 people and stranding some 26,000 tourists for days before they could be evacuated.

This story was originally published October 23, 2015 at 12:37 PM with the headline "Monster hurricane makes landfall on Mexico’s Pacific coast."