Hurricane Patricia made landfall on Mexico's Pacific coast last evening with sustained winds of 165 miles per hour. Between Wednesday and Friday, the storm made a sudden, hulk-like transformation from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane.
Patricia not only made it into the strongest category for hurricanes on the Saffir Simpson scale, but it became the strongest hurricane, period—or at least, the strongest one ever recorded.
The scale tops out at 5, which describes storms with sustained winds of greater than 157 mph. Patricia’s 200-mph winds yesterday afternoon, according to some experts, would have warranted a Category 7 ranking if the scale were continuous. Abnormally warm waters in the eastern Pacific helped fuel the terrifying growth spurt. The magnitude was impressive even from space—Astronaut Scott Kelly, aboard the International Space Station, tweeted a warning (below).
But almost as quickly as it began, the storm weakened rapidly overnight and is once again Tropical Storm Patricia, with 50-mph winds. "The first reports confirm that the damage has been less than that corresponding to a hurricane of this magnitude," President Enrique Peña Nieto said in a televised message. The governor of the state of Jalisco, one of three under a state of emergency, told the New York Times that there have been no "irreparable damages" reported there so far.
Flooding and mudslides continue to be a concern as the storm moves northeast, but let's hope it's finished blowing us away with its stats.
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