Hurricane Jova flooded the streets of Mexico's main Pacific port with torrential rain, inundating several popular beach resorts and felling trees along the coast.

Streets in the port city of Manzanillo were underwater, communities along the coast were flooded and roads were blocked due to fallen trees and washouts after Jova hit the coast as a Category Two storm.

Highways leading northwest from Manzanillo along the coast were closed and the beach towns of Zihuatlan, Melaque and Barra de Navidad were swamped with floodwaters, according to the Red Cross. However, there were no reports of injuries or deaths.

"The streets of Manzanillo are impassable, as are the highways connecting Manzanillo with the south of Jalisco," national Red Cross coordinator Isaac Oxenhaut said.

Some streets in Manzanillo were under 3 feet (1 metre) of water and the port -- Mexico's busiest for cargo -- remained closed to traffic, although a handful of shops were reopening.

With top winds reaching 75 miles per hour (120 kph), Jova was about 30 miles (50 km) south-southeast of the tourist resort of Puerto Vallarta at 5 a.m. PDT (1200 GMT), the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

The Miami-based NHC said the center of Jova crossed the Mexican coast near the town of Chamela in the state of Jalisco, on a stretch of land dotted with beaches south of Puerto Vallarta. Mexico has no major oil installations in the Pacific.

Puerto Vallarta, which suffered bad flooding when hurricane Kenna hit in 2002, was spared from the storm overnight.

Jalisco authorities had protectively set up some 70 shelters. There were no evacuations in Puerto Vallarta but people were brought to safety from Zihuatlan and Melaque.

On Tuesday, workers scrambled to fill and stack sandbags to protect the professional beach volleyball courts on Puerto Vallarta's coast, where events from the Panamerican Games are scheduled to be staged later this week.

"Jova weakening as it moves further inland ... heavy rainfall remains a major threat," the center said. Jova weakened to a Category One hurricane, the lowest on the five-step intensity scale, and was expected to weaken further to a tropical storm.

Fears of Landslides, Rain
Still, Jova could produce up to 12 inches (30.5 cm) of rainfall over four states, with isolated rainfall of up to 20 inches (51 cm), the hurricane center said, possibly causing flash flooding and mud slides in mountainous areas.

Manzanillo, Mexico's main point of arrival for cargo containers, has been closed since late Sunday and about 13 container ships are stuck in the port. Heavy rain and strong winds hit the port for most of Tuesday.

The port handles about 750 containers of cargo a month and ships goods including cars, car parts, cattle, minerals and tequila to Asian and North American markets.

Farther south, a tropical depression named Twelve E formed overnight, prompting the Mexican government to issue a tropical storm warning from Barra De Tonala southeastward to the Mexico-Guatemala border, the NHC said.

The depression, carrying winds of 35 miles per hour (55 kph), was headed north toward the Pacific coast and could become a tropical storm later on Wednesday, the center said.

"The depression is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 5 to 10 inches (13-25 cm) over portions of the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Chiapas as well as portions of Guatemala ... with possible isolated maximum amounts of 15 inches (38 cm)," it said. (Reuters)