A pre­pared Mex­i­co pop­u­la­tion has escaped rel­a­tive­ly well from the fury of Pacif­ic Ocean borne Hur­ri­cane Patri­cia, now down­grad­ed to a category‑1.
How­ev­er as the weath­er sys­tem moved north the Texas in the USA, record rains have been dumped caus­ing wide­spread flooding.
Zian Aguirre XE1ATZ report­ed that Man­zanil­lo in the Mex­i­can state of Col­i­ma, an emer­gency net on 7060 kHz was backed up by 14120 kHz and 21120 kHz, to han­dle traffic.
He report­ed that a state of emer­gency exists in three Mex­i­can states. The storm has down­grad­ed to category‑1, caus­ing min­i­mal effects to the pop­u­la­tion, and civ­il pro­tec­tion pro­to­cols worked very well.
It downed trees, flood­ing streets, and buf­fet­ed build­ings as a category‑5 storm, but lost strength in the moun­tains and was down­grad­ed to a trop­i­cal storm.
Ini­tial­ly when it made land­fall in west­ern Mex­i­co with rain and winds of up to 266km/h, it was one of the strongest ever hurricanes.
Major dam­age did not hap­pen because it missed large pop­u­la­tion cen­tres. About 15,000 tourists hur­ried­ly evac­u­at­ed the beach resort of Puer­to Val­lar­ta as peo­ple fol­lowed instruc­tions nec­es­sary for those in its pos­si­ble path.
The full out­come of Hur­ri­cane Patri­cia on Mex­i­co, and a report on its effects on Texas where half a metre of rain has fall­en, are still not yet known.
Thanks are being expressed for keep­ing the emer­gency fre­quen­cies clear.
‑Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.