(Reuters)

Tropical Storm Grace has regained hurricane strength and is forecast to move across the southwestern Gulf of Mexico on Friday (August 20) and make landfall along the coast of mainland Mexico as early as Friday evening, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

Hurricane Grace was now about 300 kilometres) east-northeast of Veracruz, Mexico and packing maximum sustained winds of 140 kilometres/hour, with higher gusts, the NHC said.

Grace dumped heavy rain on Mexico’s Caribbean coast on Thursday but appeared to have spared tourist resorts serious damage as it moved across the Yucatán Peninsula into the Gulf of Mexico, where it was forecast to strengthen again.

The government of Quintana Roo state, home to beach resorts Cancún and Tulum, said no one was hurt during the passage of Grace. It struck the Mexican coast as a Category 1 Hurricane in the morning before weakening to a tropical storm inland.

Social media images showed downed street signs and palm trees flailing in the wind near Tulum, and authorities reported some floods, power outages and toppled trees.

The NHC said Grace would dump four to eight inches of rain over the Yucatán Peninsula through Friday, and up to 12 inches in some areas. The heavy rainfall would likely cause areas of flash and urban flooding, it added.

Mexican officials said preparations had been made for the hurricane’s arrival, with dozens of military and rescue workers as well as staff from the national power utility, gearing up to help.

“We’re ready,” Laura Velazquez, head of Mexico’s civil protection authority, told a regular news conference standing alongside President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Velazquez said the states of Quintana Roo, Campeche, Yucatán and Tabasco were likely to receive heavy rainfall.

Grace unleashed downpours and flooding over Haiti, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands earlier this week. By Thursday evening it was about 65 miles north-northwest of Campeche, with maximum sustained winds of 97 kilometres/hour, moving west at 24 kilometres/hour, the NHC said.