Hurricane Felix struck the Mosquito Coast of Central America yesterday with Category 5 winds of 160mph (260km/h), making this year the first in recorded history in which two maximum-strength Atlantic storms have reached land.

Felix made landfall around dawn at Punta Gorda, 25 miles (40km) north of the Nicaraguan town of Puerto Cabezas, only two weeks after the maximum-strength Hurricane Dean blitzed Mexico, farther up the Caribbean coast.

“The winds are horrible,” Claudio Vanegas, a Red Cross official, said from Puerto Cabezas. “They send roofs flying through the air, so we aren’t going outside because it is too dangerous.”

The storm’s course, taking it along the Honduran coast, across Guatemala into Belize and Mexico, made 2007 the first time since record-keeping began in 1886 that two Atlantic Category 5 hurricanes have made landfall in the same year. Only 31 such storms have been recorded in the Atlantic so far, including eight in the past five seasons.

Before Felix hit land, more than 12,000 people were moved out of the swampy northeastern corner of Nicaragua, populated by Miskito Indians. Another 2,500 - including hundreds of tourists - fled the diving resorts on the Bay Islands off Honduras. After making landfall, the hurricane weakened to Category 2. Telephone lines were cut but distress calls were received from three boats with 49 people aboard, and radio reports said that a Catholic church was destroyed in Puerto Cabezas.

A new storm, named Hurricane Henriette, formed off the Pacific coast of Mexico, bore down on the high class resort of Cabo San Lucas, a popular retreat for Hollywood stars, with Category 1-strength winds of 75mph. It claimed seven lives even before gaining hurricane strength. A woman drowned in the high surf in Cabo San Lucas and six people were killed in flooding and landslides in Acapulco.

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