Felix weakened as it travelled west later on Tuesday.

However the storm is expected to bring heavy rains to southern Honduras and Guatemala, where hillside villages are vulnerable to mudslides.

Hurricane Felix comes only two weeks after the region was hit by Hurricane Dean.

It is the first time on record that two Atlantic hurricanes made landfall as category-five storms in a single season.

But although the two hurricanes killed more than 20 people and destroyed thousands of homes, their impact has been far less devastating than that of Hurricane Mitch in 1998.