(MSNBC) CABO SAN LUCAS, —  Hurricane Greg pounded the tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula with heavy rain and wind on Tuesday, sending hundreds of Mexicans to shelters, closing ports, and keeping tourists inside hotels before being downgraded to a tropical storm, officials said.

 THE CENTER of Greg moved over Cabo San Lucas at the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula before drifting northwest out to sea at 5 mph, hurricane specialist Lixion Avila of the National Hurricane Center in Miami told Reuters.
 
“Greg will be moving toward cooler waters so we believe it’s going to weaken tomorrow,” Avila said, adding that Greg was downgraded to a tropical storm on Tuesday afternoon.
 
Local officials also discredited earlier reports from Mexico’s Televisa news that rains associated with Greg had killed nine people in three Mexican states. Those were deaths from the past two weeks of heavy rains, officials said. “We are still on the lookout for victims but we have not been able to confirm any deaths so far,” a Mexican Red Cross spokesman told Reuters.
 
Thousands of people in the western coastal states of Colima, Jalisco and Sinaloa were either evacuated from their homes by the army or cut off from the outside world due to severed phone lines, electricity and blocked roads.