Hurricane Marie weakens off Mexico

Hurricane Marie, which briefly reached the highest possible category five destructive power, is still potent but weakening in the Pacific off Mexico, weather officials said Tuesday.

Now a category two hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, Marie's crashing waves over the weekend caused a fishing vessel to capsize, with three of its occupants still missing and presumed dead.

At 0900 GMT, Marie was 550 miles (880 kilometers) southwest of the southern tip of Baja California, according to the US-based National Hurricane Center.

Marie's maximum sustained winds were about 105 miles (165 kilometers) per hour. The storm was moving toward the northwest at 14 miles (22 kilometers) per hour.

Some 10,000 people in and around Oaxaca, one of Mexico's poorest states, sustained damage to their homes from Marie, officials said.

Officials there declared an emergency in ten municipalities due to the effects of the storm, which included massive flooding.

Marie also brought heavy rains to the states of Baja California Sur, Sonora, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Chihuahua, Jalisco, Colima, Michoacan and Guerrero, officials urged residents to stay alert for landslides.

On its present course, strong swells and winds from the hurricane are expected to reach southern California later Tuesday.

Meanwhile, another hurricane, Cristobal, a category one storm, was expected to pass north and west of Bermuda Wednesday, after dumping heavy rains on the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

© 2014 AFP