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 Perula on the Jalisco coast, said Roberto Ramirez 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,” Ramirez 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 Pena 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 7 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, 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.
“Everyone is calm, almost too calm. As we were leaving the heart of the city, I was surprised by many locals who seemed to be going about business as usual. There didn’t seem to be much urgency to leave,” said Shandraw, whose website is surfandsunshine.com.
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. Aristoteles 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.
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