so i was expecting this going in to patricia, but this was definitely the most severe storm that i ve flown to date, as far as turbulence. and you were flying, i know, low, in order to get your instruments, in order to get all the data. what could you see when you looked at the surface of the ocean. normally when you break out in the eye, you would have what we call a stadium effect. so you d see the whole eye wall from inside the eye, which is a really good picture, and you can look straight up, sometimes, see clear skies, but we didn t have any of that. we could just see lightning flashes and that was pretty much it. all right, captain allen, thank you so much for being with us. you re welcome. thanks for having me. all right. i want to go now to meteorologist jennifer gray. jennifer, how bad is this going to be? this could possibly be catastrophic, especially for the town that this eye crosses over. and it is doing that as we speak. the good news about this storm, if the
everything is shut down. the power is still on. that s good news. but the devastation hasn t occurred and it doesn t look like it s going to occur here. but again, i can t stress to you, it is happening. and probably not that far away. it is a horrific storm, erin? i mean, some of the images we re seeing, marty, are truly incredible. do we have any sense of the human cost of this yet? reporter: no, you don t. i mean, because of what we both have just stressed here is the lack of real lead time for preparation. this is an emergency manager s nightmare that you would have a storm that literally explodes off the coast with no time to essentially plan or even move people. they ve done the best they ve could. they ve even pre-positioned heavy earth-moving equipment. we saw that on the seven-hour drive for us to get into the city. almost all the traffic, of course, outbound. but we saw heavy earth-moving equipment being brought in. that s key, because roads are bound to be closed by mud
recorded history. what was it like inside? severe turbulence. there was a lot of rain associated with the storm, obviously. the eye was very well-defined and very well wrapped around, i guess you could say. and so penetrating the wall was, like i said, severe turbulence and a lot of rain and it was a small eye wall, so we had to work really quickly to drop the weather instruments. usually, in a storm, you have an item might be 30 nautical miles, so you have more time to work on dropping your weather instruments. in this case, everything happened so quickly with the small eye like that, there s a lot going on, and we were just having to work as a crew together and deal with the task at hand, and just back each other up all the way. so, it was pretty intense ride, but overall, worked out and we
small in size. it s powerful, but it s small. so hurricane force winds only extend about 35 miles from the center, but you can see it approaching landfall right now. it is continuing to weaken, but winds, 190 miles per hour, with gusts of 235 miles per hour. this is unprecedented. we ve never had a storm this strong making landfall. and so this is going to be devastating for the area where it is crossing over right now. la manzanilla is basically the coastal town we can find that is closest to where that eye is crossing. the official statement hasn t come out about it making landfall, but it is approaching, as we speak. it is going to move quickly, a category 3 by 11:00 tonight, so it s going to lose strength rapidly, but it is going to contain a lot of rain and we are going to see that storm surge that we ve been talking about all day, that s going to come with that category 5 storm. so it is making landfall, as a
and we re following the breaking news at this moment. the strongest hurricane ever recorded has made hassle. literally coming onshore as we speak. a category 5 storm, sustained winds of 295 miles per hour, hitting pacific coast of new mexico. the storm surge inundating homes, businesses, resorts. tens of millions in the storm s path. flights to and from the united states canceled, and many a vacationers stranded. a lot of the shelters don t have food, water, or power because the storm got so strong, so quickly, it was completely unexpected. rosa flores is outfront live in guadalajara, mexico. rosa, what is the scene where you are tonight? reporter: hi, erin. well, my team and i just arrived to guadalajara. we flew in from chicago. and i can tell you that there is a calm before the storm here. a lot of folks are actually