Hurricane Felix became “a potentially catastrophic category five hurricane” and made landfall in extreme northeastern Nicaragua early Tuesday, the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) informed.

On Monday, the storm lost some power and was shortly downgraded to a category four storm, but specialists from the NHC said Felix grew into a fierce hurricane and has reached the ultimate level on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

With maximum sustained winds of 260 kilometres per hour, Felix’s center threatens to strike hard the Nicaragua-Honduras border on Tuesday, bringing massive rainfall and most likely devastating landslides in the area.

“Felix should remain a major hurricane up to its arrival in the hurricane warning area,” a public advisory from the NHC said. “Some restrengthening is possible prior to landfall.”

Honduras is expected to be affected by the hurricane, prompting the authorities to evacuate thousands of people from areas considered vulnerable. Preparations were also made in Nicaragua, Belize and Mexico, authorities advising people to make supplies and brace themselves for intense phenomenons.

Tourists in Honduras’ coastal areas were also advised to prepare for evacuation and emergency centers have been set up for people who can’t leave the region.

According to the Nicaraguan Civil Defence, Cabo Gracias a Dios has been placed on red alert and other neighbouring sparsely populated are on yellow alert.

“In those areas we have some 50,000 people at high risk, and it will be possible to evacuate about 10,000 from the most vulnerable areas,” the Civil Defence chief Mario Perez-Cassar said.

Approximately 12,000 people living in the Mexican region bordering Belize have been already evacuated.

Felix could disrupt the presidential elections in Guatemala, experts saying the hurricane is bound to strike the country on Wednesday and Thursday. President Oscar Berger expressed his hope that people will be able to do their “patriotic duty and go to vote” on Sunday.

Colombia could also be affected by the powerful tropical cyclone, prompting authorities to evacuate beach areas in the Caribbean island of San Andres.

Specialists estimated that Felix will bring heavy rains of 13 to 20 centimetres which could trigger “life- threatening flash floods and mud slides.”

After lashing out with heavy rainfall at the Dutch Antilles islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao as a tropical storm, Felix encountered warm currents and quickly became a powerful hurricane on Saturday.

For the people living in Jamaica, Mexico and other islands waiting to be struck by the merciless storm, images with devastated homes and crops are still fresh. That is because Felix comes just two weeks after another category-5 hurricane caused massive damage in the Lesser Antilles, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and the Yucatan Peninsula.

Mexico was struck twice by Hurricane Dean, the second time with not so much destructive force, as it withered away over central Mexico. Twenty-eight people were killed by the first hurricane of the Atlantic season.