Hurricane Dean hit Mexico one last time before ending its run Wednesday evening in the central mountains north of Mexico City.
After starting last Thursday in the Atlantic Ocean about 340 kilometres east-northeast of Barbados, it has left at least 20 dead so far.
Dean's eye hit an area south of Cabo Rojo on the Gulf of Mexico about 12:30 p.m. ET. The Category 2 hurricane's winds reached 160 kilometres per hour, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Dean's winds slowed to 110 km/h by mid-afternoon. By 8 p.m. ET, the Mexican government had suspended all tropical storm warnings.
Earlier Wednesday, residents in the area boarded army trucks to escape to shelters in Mexico's inland.
For some in central Mexico, the big worry would be rain, not wind, as the storm was expected to dump up to 51 centimetres of precipitation.
"Flooding, mud slides are going to be a big problem in central Mexico," Bernie Rayno, a senior meteorologist with Accuweather, told CTV Newsnet.
When Dean hit Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday, it came ashore as a monstrous Category 5 hurricane, the third-most intense storm ever recorded.
On the way there, it struck places like St. Lucia, Martinique, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, although some places were spared direct hits.
Resorts on the so-called Mayan Riviera were also spared from much of the damage, but one coastal town, Majahual, did take a heavy blow.
Hundreds of homes were demolished. A concrete cruise ship dock got partly washed away.
Further inland, there was still little word about impoverished Mayan communities where people still live in stick huts.
Taking heed, oil field operations in the Bay of Campeche were shut down and evacuated as the storm headed towards the southern Gulf of Mexico, reducing daily production by 2.7 million barrels of oil and 2.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
That area is home to the Cantarelli oil field, which is Mexico's most productive. More than 100 oil platforms are in the area including three major oil exporting ports.
Ciudad del Carmen, a key oil production city on the gulf, suffered 70 per cent flooding from the storm's surge, although no one died. Pemex, the Mexican state oil company, said its facilities wouldn't suffer major damage.
Mexico's only nuclear power plant also suspended production when the storm continued to spiral westward near Laguna Verde, where the plant is located on the Veracruz coast.
Veracruz State, which borders the Gulf of Mexico, will likely see heavy losses to its sugar cane and corn crops.
Some officials think coffee plantations at higher levels may be threatened by heavy rains.
With files from The Associated Press
