AUTHORITIES have received reports of some flooding and landslides after Patricia, the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere, made landfall on Mexico’s Pacific coast.
But America’s National Hurricane Center has downgraded the hurricane to a category 4 after it started weakening.
However, they warn that the hurricane is still extremely dangerous with sustained winds at about 215km/h.
TV news reports from the coast show some toppled trees and lamp posts and flooded streets.
Patricia’s projected path now takes it over a mountainous region dotted with isolated hamlets that are at risk of mudslides and flash floods.
The hurricane made landfall as a category 5 storm in Emiliano Zapata in Jalisco state, near the major port of Manzanillo.
A few hours before landfall at 6.15pm (just after 10am AEDT), the hurricane’s wind reached a record 325km/h, before weakening slightly to a still-fierce 305km/h.
The eye of the storm ... Patricia approaches the western coast of Mexico in this October 23, 2015 NASA handout satellite image.Source:Reuters
Mexico’s National Commission for Water, CONAGUA, said the eye of Patricia has a diameter of 10km.
Mexican Transportation Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Esparza says officials have been bracing for the worst and are “not declaring victory” just yet.
Three airports in the storm’s path were shut: Puerto Vallarta; Manzanillo in Colima state; and Tepic in Nayarit.
Authorities opened hundreds of shelters and announced plans to shut off electricity as a safety precaution.
The hurricane has the potential to cause death and destruction over a large swath of the nation, including favourite tourist spots for Australian travellers including Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo and Acapulco.
Aussies in Mexico told to exercise “high degree of caution”
Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade warned on its Smart Traveller website on Friday “excessive rainfall, violent winds, and storm surges may cause flash flooding and landslides, which may lead to transportation and communications problems”.
“You should monitor local news and weather reports, follow the advice of local authorities, and contact your travel agent or tour operator to determine whether the situation will disrupt travel arrangements,” DFAT warned.
“The level of the advice has not changed.
“We continue to advise Australians to exercise a high degree of caution in Mexico.”
Emergency and medical care, as well as water and food supplies, could be affected.
Authorities relocated coastal residents, closed ports and schools in several states and evacuated tourists from beach hotels before the hurricane made landfall in the western state of Jalisco.
People boarded up windows and bought water and food supplies as they hunkered down for the storm and urgently sought shelter.
“We are facing a natural phenomenon, a force that we have never seen before” in the world, President Enrique Pena Nieto told Radio Formula earlier in the day. “We will face difficult moments.”
Warning of a “threat of great scale,” Pena Nieto said the government’s priority is to “protect and save the lives of Mexicans.”
Rain and wind lashed the coast hours after Patricia mushroomed late Thursday into a Category 5 storm - the top of the Saffir-Simpson scale.
Wrong place, wrong time for tourists
Stores shut down in the tourist resort of Puerto Vallarta, farther north of where Patricia made landfall, and shop owners attached duct tape to their windows for protection.
“I’ve had to give away tape to people who weren’t prepared,” said Ramiro Arias, a frame shop owner. “We’re procrastinators. We don’t react until we see the situation.”
Some 7000 foreign and 21,000 Mexican tourists were in Puerto Vallarta ahead of the storm, said Jalisco state tourism secretary Enrique Ramos Flores.
Seafront hotels were evacuated and an unknown number of tourists were rushed to shelters, the airport and bus stations.
Federal officials said 3500 people were evacuated from Puerto Vallarta by bus and plane.
A Red Cross facility turned into a shelter for 109 people in Puerto Vallarta, including Americans, Canadians and Italians.
“I had the bad luck of being at the wrong place in the wrong time,” said Gian Paolo Azzena, a 26-year-old Italian medical school graduate.
“I found out that a hurricane was coming thanks to a craftsman. I thought it was a joke.”
A handful of people waited at a bus station before service ended at midday, while others bought water and loaded vehicles with jerrycans of fuel.
While Patricia lashed the southern coast of Jalisco, it had yet to cause mayhem in Puerto Vallarta, where some 20 people were seen drinking at a beach bar earlier in the afternoon.
The US Hurricane Center has warned that Patricia was a “potentially catastrophic” hurricane and President Barack Obama said US disaster aid experts were on the ground and primed to help.
Tens of thousands of US tourists are among those in the hurricane’s path, US officials said.
Patricia could be US bound
Authorities shut down power from Puerto Vallarta to Manzanillo to prevent electrocutions.
Jose Maria Tapia Franco, director of the National Disaster Fund, said 400,000 people live in vulnerable areas. Hundreds of shelters were made available.
Fishing communities were evacuated along Jalisco’s coast.
In Colima state, villages around the Volcano of Fire were emptied over concerns that ash that accumulated during recent volcanic activity could combine with water to produce landslides.
Authorities deployed 400 federal police to assist populations in the area. Patricia is expected to dump up to 51cm of rain over five western Mexican states, which could produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides.
The National Water Commission said Patricia was “so big and intense” that it could cross the entire country, dip into the Gulf of Mexico, and make landfall in the United States.
Heavy rain led to the postponement of the second practice session of the United States Formula One Grand Prix at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas.
Jalisco, Michoacan, Colima and Nayarit states are expected to get the equivalent of 40 per cent of their annual rainfall in the next 48 hours, the water commission said.
Patricia compared to Haiyan
With maximum sustained winds near 325km/h Patricia is the strongest storm ever recorded in the eastern Pacific or in the Atlantic, said Dave Roberts, a hurricane specialist at the US National Hurricane Centre.
Patricia’s power was comparable to that of Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7300 dead or missing in the Philippines two years ago, according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation.
More than four million people were displaced and more than one million houses were destroyed or damaged in 44 provinces in the central Visayas region, a large cluster of islands that includes some of the country’s poorest provinces.
Capable of lifting cars, destroying homes
Evacuations were under way in Puerto Vallarta overnight, with officials taking people to 14 shelters, mostly in schools, according to the Jalisco government’s web page. Exact numbers of those evacuated were not immediately available.
Roberto Ramirez, the director of Mexico’s National Water Commission, which includes the nation’s meteorological service, said that Hurricane Patricia will be powerful enough to lift up cars, destroy homes that are not sturdily built with cement and steel and will be able to drag along people caught outside when the storm strikes.
Mr Ramirez said that the people in the most danger from the hurricane will be those on the coast, especially in the state of Jalisco.
The lobby of the Shearaton Hotel in Puerto Vallarta was bustling overnight, with a long line of people forming to check out. More than 900 guests had rooms at the hotel the previous evening, but many wanted to get out of town before the storm arrived.
Sandra Rojas and her husband, a veterinarian from San Jose, Costa Rica, were among those trying to leave. After loading their cars, they were going to drive to the Jalisco state capital of Guadalajara to plan their next move.
The hotel is saying that nothing is going to happen,” said Ms Rojas. “But it’s nature. Anything can happen.
In Puerto Vallarta on Thursday, restaurants and stores taped or boarded-up windows, and residents raced to stores for last-minute purchases ahead of the storm.
The Hurricane Centre in Miami warned that preparations should be rushed to completion, saying the storm could cause coastal flooding, destructive waves and flash floods.
“This is an extremely dangerous, potentially catastrophic hurricane,” centre meteorologist Dennis Feltgen said.
Mr Feltgen said Patricia also poses problems for Texas. Forecast models indicate that after the storm breaks up over land, remnants of its tropical moisture will likely combine with and contribute to heavy rainfall that is already soaking Texas independently of the hurricane, he said.
In Colima, authorities handed out sandbags to help residents protect their homes from flooding.
“We are calm,” said Gabriel Lopez, a worker at Las Hadas Hotel in Manzanillo.
“We don’t know what direction (the storm) will take, but apparently it’s headed this way. ... If there is an emergency we will take care of the people. There are rooms that are not exposed to wind or glass.”
Why did Patricia become a monster so quickly?
Hurricane Patricia zoomed from tropical storm to record-beater in 30 hours flat like a jet-fuelled sports car.
Why? The Pacific storm had just the right ingredients.
Plenty of warm water provided the energy what meteorologists call explosive intensification. The air was much moister than usual, adding yet more fuel. And at the same time, upper-level crosswinds — called shear — that restrain a hurricane from strengthening were missing for much of Thursday, meteorologists said.
“I was really astounded,” said MIT meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel.
“It was over the juiciest part of the eastern Pacific.”
El Nino’s fingerprints are all over this, meteorologists agreed. And while it fits perfectly into climate scientists’ theories of what a warming world will be like, they say global warming can’t quite be blamed — yet.
At 10pm EDT Wednesday (1pm Thursday AEDT), Patricia was a tropical storm off Mexico with 105km/h winds that forecasters expected to intensify rapidly. In fact, one forecast gave it a 97 per cent chance of getting stronger fast.
But it strengthened so quickly that many were surprised, said Robert Rogers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Hurricane Research Division.
By 4am EDT Friday (7pm Friday AEDT) Patricia’s winds were a record for hurricanes: 321km/h.
“Incredible. You don’t see many like this,” said former hurricane hunter meteorologist Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private Weather Underground.
“In fact in the Western Hemisphere, we’ve never seen anything like this. ”
Worldwide, this is the ninth Category 5 storm this year, which is tied for the second most on record, Masters said. Normal years are around five to six. A Category 5 storm has winds of 253km/h or higher.
The eastern and northern Pacific regions have had more tropical storms than usual this season; the Atlantic has had less.
That’s a classic signature of the weather pattern called El Nino — with warmer waters to feed storms and favourable winds in the Pacific and unfavourable winds in the Atlantic, Masters and others said.
Patricia is being fuelled by near-record warm 87-degree Pacific waters at the surface that ran warm unusually deep.
Climate science theory says that as the world warms, the most extreme storms will get even stronger and wetter. Patricia’s record strength is “consistent with what we say” but there are too few examples to make a scientifically accurate connection, Emanuel said.
Patricia and Haiyan from 2013 may be “warning signs that, hey this could be the future,” Masters said.
No comments:
Post a Comment