(This updates the report posted yesterday.)

Mexican officials said they are planning emergency evacuations for 20,000 families as Hurricane Jimena roars toward Mexico’s Baja California as an extremely dangerous Category Five storm.

The National Weather Service said that Jimena was packing winds of up to 250 kilometers per hour but was expected to weaken slightly before making landfall in Baja California late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

The US National Hurricane Center, an American agency which tracks and predicts storms, said that the center of the hurricane was 460 kilometers south of Cabo San Lucas as of 0001 GMT Tuesday.

As the most powerful hurricane of the year—the only one to reach Category Five—approached, residents of the northwestern peninsula frantically boarded up their homes and stockpiled goods.

Jimena forced a major international conference on tax transparency to be moved from Los Cabos, a resort town on the southern tip of Baja California, and set up in Mexico City instead.

The event was moved because of the “threat of severe damage posed by Hurricane Jimena,” according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

(via AFP)