Mexico tourists flee Hurricane Jimena

MEXICO: Hurricane Jimena weakened to a Category Two storm early Wednesday as it closed in on Mexico's Baja California peninsula, US forecasters said.

The storm's top winds decreased to 175 kilometers (110 miles) per hour, bringing it down to a Category Two hurricane, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

At one point on Tuesday it had been on the threshold of reaching the top of the one-to-five Saffir-Simpson scale. On Wednesday, the Miami-based NHC said it would continue to weaken prior to making landfall.

But Mexican National Weather Service meteorologist Dario Rodriguez told AFP that Jimena "maintains a high level of danger." Jimena lost strength a day after howling winds and strong rains lashed Baja California, sending tourists fleeing from resort towns, although many villagers ignored appeals to evacuate and hunkered down to tough it out.

The hurricane was expected to make landfall on the southern tip of the peninsula Wednesday and on central Baja California late Wednesday and Thursday, forecasters said.

"This phenomenon is unprecedented. In the history of the peninsula, we have not had a storm of the force of Jimena," Jose Gajon, director of the Baja California Sur civil protection service, said in a local radio interview.

AFP