MEXICO CITY, Oct. 23 (CGTN) -- Hurricane Willa crashed ashore in western Mexico Tuesday, lashing the Pacific coast with powerful wind, heavy rain and what forecasters warned was "extremely dangerous" storm surge.
The powerful storm, which was a maximum Category 5 hurricane on Monday, had weakened to Category 3 as it moved toward land. But forecasters warned that even still the major storm had the potential to unleash deadly flooding and landslides.
The US National Hurricane Center warned it was unleashing "an extremely dangerous storm surge... along portions of the coast of southwestern Mexico."
More than 4,250 people were evacuated from high-risk areas, including tourists who were on vacation at the beach, the head of Mexico's emergency services, Luis Felipe Puente, told a press conference.
They are being housed in 58 temporary shelters.
At a shelter in Escuinapa, a town of 30,000 people that sits in the middle of the storm's likely path, residents fretted over their houses as they waited out the storm.
"Let's just hope this is over soon so we can go home," said Epigmenio Cardenas, 44, a farmer who was among the 2,500 people huddled there.
"You feel bad leaving everything behind, but what can you do? We're up against nature."
Many residents had boarded up their windows with plywood.
The Mexican army deployed troops to roll out a disaster response operation in the area.
In Mazatlan, a tranquil resort town with turquoise waters, the hotels that line the coast were largely empty as workers nailed plywood over the windows and built sandbag barriers to keep out the flood waters earlier in the day.
Willa packed maximum sustained winds of 195 kilometers (120 miles) per hour, the National Hurricane Center said.
It is expected to dump 15 to 30 centimeters (six to 12 inches) of rain on parts of Sinaloa, Nayarit and Jalisco states, with some areas getting up to 45 centimeters.
The NHC has warned this rainfall will cause life-threatening flash flooding and landslides.
The three states had already declared an alert and cancelled school.
