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Winds were at 45 mph and the storm was moving northeast in the state of Durango, Mexico at 20 mph. The storm will continue to weaken when it hits the Sierra Madre mountain range and spills moisture into northern Mexico and Texas.
A Category 5 hurricane, Willa weakened before landing in a Category 3 storm, but the maximum winds maintained were 120 km / h (195 km / h).
"A storm surge, winds and precipitation threatening life are spreading on the coast," the US hurricane center said.
Forming Saturday, Willa went from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in two days in what the hurricane center called "explosive" reinforcement. In a 24-hour period, his winds blew 80 mph.
Forecasters were concerned about storm surges and precipitation.
"Near the coast, the wave will be accompanied by significant and destructive waves," said the hurricane center. "Precipitation will cause floods and landslides that are life threatening."
Total precipitation is expected to be 18 inches in parts of the Mexican states of Durango, Jalisco, Nayarit and Sinaloa.
Landing
Willa made landfall in Isla del Bosque on Tuesday and headed for Mazatlan, in Sinaloa, according to the National Water Commission of Mexico.
Strong storms were also expected in Chihuahua, Guerrero, Veracruz, Baja California and Chiapas. Authorities informed of any landslides.
Mayor of Puerto Vallarta, Arturo Dávalos, met Tuesday with CNN in Español and said the evacuations had already started and that two shelters were available.
Davalos also said that about 650 tourists of different nationalities had been taken to a safe place as part of a coordinated action with the Canadian and US consulates and that they were waiting for the Alert being lifted.
A tourist in Nayarit, where Willa was going to hit hard, seems to have been caught off guard by the hurricane, telling CNN in Español that he did not expect bad weather, just beach. He added that the storm was not going to slow down his vacation, but he added that while he was deteriorating, he would be worried for his family.
The Mexican National Defense Office has posted images on its Twitter account of temporary shelters.
Willa had also been a danger to the forecasters. A Hurricane Hunters aircraft from the Air Force Reserve was forced to turn around Monday for reasons of concern over its on-board equipment after a flash of one of the external rainbands from Willa's blown up, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The airlines had started to leave the path Willa took. Southwest Airlines had canceled all flights at the Puerto Vallarta International Airport, a seaside resort in the state of Jalisco. American Airlines had canceled its flights to Mazatlan, about 275 km to the north.
The landing of Willa took place three years after the most powerful hurricane that hit the Pacific coast, Patricia, a category 5 storm, hit the ground in Jalisco.
The back-to-back systems of Willa and Vicente helped make the 2018 hurricane season in the northeastern Pacific a record year.
The hurricane season is now the most active ever recorded. It uses a measure called accumulated cyclone energy, which combines the number of storms and their intensity throughout their lives to give an overall measure of tropical activity in a given region.
There have been 10 major hurricanes this year, including Willa, which in 1992 imposed the largest hurricanes in the Northeast Pacific in one year.
Michael Guy, Claudia Dominguez and Kelly Murray from CNN contributed to this report.
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