Hurricane Patricia, one of the strongest ever, crashed into western Mexico yesterday with rain and winds of up to 165 mph, hammering coastal areas but skirting major cities and causing less damage than feared.

Mowing down trees, flooding streets and battering buildings, 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.

Despite this downgrading, the storm still dumped torrential rains that the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) warned were "likely to produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides".

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 6:15 p.m. on Friday, the NHC 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.

At one point generating sustained winds of 200 mph , 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.

Even though it was weakening, Patricia was expected to produce total rainfall accumulations of 8 to 12 inches , with isolated maximum amounts of 20 inches , over the Mexican states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Michoacan, and Guerrero through the weekend.

In a brief televised address on Friday, 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 initial reports confirm that damage has been less than would be expected of a hurricane of this magnitude," Pena Nieto said. "But we cannot lower our guard yet."

The government cautioned that ash and other material from the volcano of Colima, some 130 miles 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.

The strongest storm on record was Cyclone Tip which hit Japan in 1979.