Oct 20, 2009, 15:48 GMT
Mexico City - Rick, once a powerful category-five hurricane, weakened into a tropical storm as it approached the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California peninsula, where it had already claimed one life.
Both the Baja peninsula and the western coast of mainland Mexico, however, were still experiencing heavy rain and large swells Tuesday.
'Within the coming 36 hours it will make landfall, on the coast of Sinaloa,' Mexico's National Meteorological Service said Tuesday.
The Miami-based US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said Rick's maximum sustained winds had weakened to 100 kilometres per hour Tuesday, with higher gusts.
The eye of the storm was located 325 kilometres south-south-west of Cabo San Lucas, which along with San Jose del Cabo form a popular tourist getaway on Baja's southern tip.
The storm was moving northeast at 11 kilometres per hour and was expected to pass near the southern tip of the Baja peninsula late Tuesday or early Wednesday and approach the Mexican mainland Wednesday.
A large wave caused by the storm carried a 38-year-old Mexican man out to sea Sunday. The man had been standing with his family on the rocks by Los Cabos harbour in San Jose del Cabo, municipal civil protection inspector Wenceslao Cesena said.
Meteorologists warned the storm would spawn heavy rains that could cause flooding and mudslides and would produce large swells.
Rick was the seventh hurricane of the season in the Pacific, only one of which has made landfall. In late August, Hurricane Jimena caused flooding on Baja.
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