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A powerful Hurricane Patricia bore down on Mexico's central Pacific Coast on Thursday night for what forecasters said could be a devastating blow, as officials declared a state of emergency and handed out sandbags in preparation for possible flooding.
In Manzanillo, one of the country's principal ports, skies were still calm, if cloudy, and no evacuation orders had been issued. But with Patricia forecast to make landfall Friday as a Category 4 hurricane, authorities rushed to finalize preparations. Luis Felipe Puente, Mexico's civil defense coordinator, said schools would be closed Friday in Colima state.
"We are calm," said Gabriel López, 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 salons that are not exposed to wind or glass."
The U.S. National Hurricane Center 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," center meteorologist Dennis Feltgen said.
Luz Adriana Limón Rojas of Colima state's civil defense agency said the area has problems with drainage during storms.
"The neighborhood leaders have come for sacks to fill with sand," she said.
The federal government declared a state of emergency for 56 municipalities in the storm's projected path, in the states of Colima, Nayarit and Jalisco.
By Thursday evening, Patricia's maximum sustained winds had increased to 150 mph (240 kph) - just below Category 5 threshold of 157 mph (252 kph), the highest designation on the Saffir-Simpson scale used to quantify hurricane's wind strength.
Patricia was centered about 225 miles (360 kilometers) south of Manzanillo and was moving northwest at 13 mph (20 kph) on a projected track to come onshore between Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta sometime Friday afternoon or evening.
A hurricane warning was in effect for the Mexican coast from San Blas to Punta San Telmo, a stretch of coast that includes Manzanillo. A broader area was under hurricane watch, tropical storm warning, or tropical storm watch.
The Hurricane Center said Patricia was expected to bring rainfall of 6 to 12 inches, with isolated amounts of up to 20 inches in some locations. Tropical storm conditions were expected to reach land late Thursday or early Friday, complicating any remaining preparation work at that point.
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.
"It's only going to make a bad situation worse," he said.
