Strongest hurricane on record heads for Mexico

With maximum sustained winds of 200 mph, forecasters said hurricane Patricia will make landfall on Mexico's Pacific Coast Friday. Forecasters also warn that the monster Category 5 storm could be catastrophic.

Tens of thousands of people are being evacuated from Mexico's Pacific coast Friday as Patricia, the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere, bears down on the Puerto Vallarta area packing sustained winds of 200 mph.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center predicted the Category 5 hurricane would make a “potentially catastrophic landfall” in southwestern Mexico later in the day.
The hurricane center described the storm as the most powerful ever recorded in the eastern Pacific or Atlantic basins. It warned of powerful winds and torrential rain that could bring life-threatening flash flooding, and dangerous, destructive storm surge.
At 8 a.m., Hurricane Patricia was 145 miles southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico, moving to the north-northwest at 12 mph, the Hurricane Center said.
A total of 50,000 people are expected to be evacuated ahead of the storm, according to civil protection agencies in the three Mexican states of Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit, Vallarta Daily reports. The city of Puerto Vallarta has established 18 shelter locations to house evacuees.
Some businesses in Puerto Vallarta had begun boarding and taping up windows late Thursday.
Puerto Vallarta, with a metro population of 380,000, is a popular tourist destination and has a large expatriate community of people from the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

People preparing for the arrival of hurricane Patricia board up the windows of a seaside business in the Pacific resort city of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, Oct. 22, 2015. (Photo: Cesar Rodriguez, AP)
Patricia is expected to remain an extremely dangerous Category 5 hurricane through landfall, the hurricane center warned.
The U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization said in a tweet that Patricia was comparable in intensity to Typhoon Haiyan. That storm left more than 7,300 people dead or missing in the Philippines two years ago.
Mexican officials declared a state of emergency in dozens of coastal towns, including Manzanillo and the luxury resort Puerto Vallarta, and ordered schools closed Friday, the Associated Press said.
Puerto Vallarta has a population of 200,000 people while about 100,000 people live in Manzanillo.
"This is an extremely dangerous, potentially catastrophic hurricane," hurricane center spokesman Dennis Feltgen said.
Though the hurricane should weaken rapidly over the mountainous terrain of Mexico, Patricia's remnants will continue to produce heavy rain in central parts of the country and into Texas over the weekend.