MEXICO CITY, Oct. 25 (UPI) — Officials in Mexico say Hurricane Patricia, the most powerful tropical cyclone recorded in the Western Hemisphere, caused no deaths and little damage after making landfall Friday.
The Category 5 storm formed in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Oct. 20, peaking in intensity to unprecedented wind speeds of 200 mph on Friday before reaching the west coast of Mexico later in the evening.
The storm, which held wind speeds of 165 mph upon making landfall, rapidly lost strength after running into the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains. In little over 24 hours the National Hurricane Center downgraded Patricia to a remnant low over northeastern Mexico.
Flooding has been reported in various portions of the country as well as in Texas, and while about 3,500 homes were damaged and 200,000 people lost power, half regained it in quick order, and no deaths have been recorded.
President Enrique Peña Nieto said the catastrophic damage that was anticipated in portions of Mexico’s coastal Colima, Jalisco, Michoacan and Nayarit states “fortunately, has not occurred.”
“The preventive measures taken were the correct ones,” the Washington Post quotedPeña Nieto as saying Saturday from the airport in Manzanillo, in Colima state. “Nature, above all, has been generous to Mexico.”
