Patricia, one of the strongest ever hurricanes, crashed into western Mexico with rain and winds of up to 266 kph, hammering coastal areas but skirting major cities and causing less damage than feared.

Mowing down trees, flooding streets and battering buildings, Hurricane Patricia plowed into Mexico as a Category 5 storm on Friday evening before grinding inland.

It rapidly lost power in the mountains that rise up along the Pacific coast and was downgraded to a tropical storm by yesterday morning.

So far, it appeared that major damage had been averted because the powerful storm did not hit large population centres.

Around 15,000 tourists had been hurriedly evacuated from the beach resort of Puerto Vallarta as people scrambled to get away from the advancing hurricane, whose massive swirl over Mexico could be seen clearly from space.

“It sparked chaos here, it ruined a lot of things, took down the roof, lots of trees. Things are in a bad state where we work,” said Domingo Hernandez, a hotel worker in the resort of Barra de Navidad near to the major port of Manzanillo.

Thousands of residents and tourists ended up in improvised shelters, but there were no early reports of fatalities and many felt they had escaped lightly.

The storm hit land near the area of Cuixmala, home to one of Mexico’s most exclusive getaways, at 6.15pm on Friday, the US National Hurricane Centre said.

Cuixmala, located between the major port of Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta, has over the years played host to a colourful assortment of world leaders and eccentric billionaires. The area is sparsely populated but there are small towns, and it was not clear yet how much damage they had suffered.

Generating sustained winds of 322kph, Patricia was the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere

At one point generating sustained winds of 322kph, Patricia was the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. Even though it lost some power before coming ashore, it was still a Category 5 storm, the strongest on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.

Such storms are relatively rare and are capable of causing devastating destruction.

Residents protect themselves from the rain outside a bus station in Guadalajara.

Patricia’s edges caused flooding in parts of Puerto Vallarta, but the resort escaped the worst of the storm and dozens of tourists were able to leave shelters and return to their hotels on Friday night.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a big problem with the water,” said Dario Pomina, 43, manager of the Posadas de Roger hotel in the city centre. “Things are more or less okay.”

Brian Shelley, a tourist from Chicago, rode out the storm eating burgers with other guests at a boutique hotel on a hill in Puerto Vallarta. After talking one of his panicked travelling companions into staying, he was glad the storm turned out to be less punishing than was feared. “I’ve seen bigger waves on normal days,” he joked.

Patricia rapidly lost power once it travelled inland. By yesterday morning it had been downgraded to a tropical storm with its maximum winds down to about 80kph, the Miami-based Hurricane Centre said.

The storm was located about 55 km northeast of the central city of Zacatecas, moving north-northeast at 34 kph, the centre said. It could dissipate by night.

Even though it was weakening, Patricia was expected to produce total rainfall accumulations of 20 to 30cm, with isolated maximum amounts of 50cm, over the Mexican states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Michoacan, and Guerrero through yesterday, the Hurricane Centre said.

In a brief televised address yesterday, President Enrique Pena Nieto urged Mexicans to take precautions, warning that the storm which weather forecasters had said could cause catastrophic damage still posed a serious risk.

The government cautioned that ash and other material from the volcano of Colima, 210km from Puerto Vallarta, could combine with heavy rainfall to trigger liquid cement-style mudflows that could smother villages.

The Mexican Red Cross said it had dispatched relief teams and trucks packed with humanitarian supplies ahead of the hurricane’s landfall.

Patricia became a tropical storm in the Pacific on Thursday, and strengthened with stunning speed as it closed in on the Mexican coast. Meteorological authorities compared it to Typhoon Haiyan, which killed over 6,300 people in the Philippines in 2013.

Destructive weather have hit both the Pac­ific and Gulf coasts of Mexico over the years.

Thousands of tourists in the resorts of the Baja California Peninsula were stranded by tropical storm Odile in 2014, while the convergence of two storms a year earlier triggered flash floods that killed dozens of people. The strongest storm on record was Cyclone Tip which hit Japan in 1979.