On paper, Hurricane Patricia seemed like a monster. Satellite photos taken over Mexico’s Pacific coast on Thursday showed a tight swirl of 200-mile-per-hour winds, with the potential to wreak havoc across the country’s coastline. Throughout the day the picture appeared to worsen, with the hurricane’s category raised from four to five by late Thursday night.

But Patricia appears to have been no more than a blowhard, with Mexican authorities reporting no fatalities, and levels of damage not eclipsing knocked-down trees and a few dozen ripped-off roofs. It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon in Manzanillo, an industrial port on the northwestern coast, which satellite photos showed to be at the epicenter of the storm. The restaurants are full, while the hospitals and shelters are emptying. Locals are sanguine about the experience.

“My kids were taking pictures of themselves with the trees yesterday,” said taxi driver Vidal Arreola, 37. “We were expecting the worst, but the storm turned out to be a rabbit in the end.” Outside one restaurant, a busker deported from California stands in the doorway with a setlist that feels hand-picked for the day: “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” is his opening number, while “Lemon Tree” seems to allude to the 150 trees knocked over in the Manzanillo area. Advertising hoardings hang shredded by the highway, but already street vendors are cutting between the lanes of traffic selling mandarins and papaya.

Fireman Luis Velez, 47, credits the lack of casualties to advance planning by the local government.

“They stopped the music and just had news alerts all day yesterday,” he explains. “That stopped people panicking when they cut off the electricity and blocked access to petrol. Everyone knew what was happening and why. It was really efficient.”

At Manzanillo General Hospital, Director Dr. Cesar Pimentel — who’s boyish and soft-spoken for a man of 60 — says that the main activity at the hospital last night was patients being moved from other areas closer to the storm, including a baby born five weeks premature. Pimentel described the baby as “really small, but absolutely fine.”

Pimentel described a tense day and night waiting for the winds to hit. When only heavy rains fell, he began to hope that the storm had threaded the needle between Manzanillo and the major tourist center of Puerto Vallarta. “We could only feel relieved at 5:30, 6 in the morning, though,” he said. “We were ready with extra beds and an extra emergency room. They’re all empty right now. The only injuries directly related to the storm were a man who cut his hand on broken glass, with another patient who strained a knee.”

But while Patricia has been degraded rapidly from a category four to one, and then to a tropical depression as of Saturday afternoon, locals seem to echo the Mexican President’s plea not to “let their guard down.” The approach roads from Colima and Guadalajara — currently jammed with a large number of the 50,000 people evacuated from the area Saturday — are steep, winding mountain tracks, with lanes blocked here and there by debris and broken trees. The earth here is saturated with rainfall, raising concerns about severe landslides in the days to come. Crocodiles have been spotted in the center of Manzanillo, escaping the chaotic floodwaters by taking to the public park.

What’s more, the isolated rural communities — such as Barra de Navidad and Los Camoles — remain cut off, both in terms of transport and phone and Internet communication. The coming days may present a different picture of Hurricane Patricia’s impact. Indeed, videos posted to Twitter by residents of the village showed the storm shredding roofs and leaving windows in shards.

“It was like a miracle. We went out on patrol all Friday night,” said Carlos Villegas, 23, a member of Club de Rescate, a civil organization created by 10 young Manzanillo residents the same day that Hurricane Patricia alerts began to spread. “Of course we were afraid, but we wanted to take care of our people,” he added.

For now, though, the mood is one of cautious, slightly amazed optimism.

“It was a pretty smooth night,” said Velez, preparing to weave his motorbike past drifts of fallen palm fronds and snapped branches. “Go enjoy the sun.”

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