Hurricanes Henriette, Felix Slam Ashore in Latin America (1/2)

Hurricane Felix made landfall as a category five storm, with heavy rainfall and maximumsustained winds of 260 kilometers per hour. Weather forecasters said the storm had weakened after the eye came ashore, and said it would continue to lose strength during the next day or two.

Meteorologist Dennis Feltgen of the National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm will cause heavy rains and possible flooding as it moves over mountainous areas.

"You have all this moisture all this tropical energy which is being released as the hurricane breaks up over the land area, so it creates this heavy rain event, where we expect up to two feet or even slightly greater amounts in some of the higher terrain of the mountains."

The hurricane first hit land in remote, swampy areas of the Miskito Coast, and moved through villages further inland. Officials in Honduras and Nicaragua moved thousands of residents and tourists into shelters, and evacuated others from flood-prone areas ahead of the storm.

U.S. military officials said a Chinook helicopter was flown in to evacuate 19 American citizens from the Honduran island of Roatan on Monday.