MEXICO CITY — Hurricane Willa weakened to a tropical depression on Wednesday after making landfall in west-central Mexico, hours after officials evacuated thousands of coastal residents.

Early Wednesday the storm, whose winds had been reaching 120 miles per hour, lost much of its power, according to the United States National Hurricane Center. The center said that the storm, with maximum sustained winds of 35 m.p.h., was expected to continue moving inland and dissipate later in the day.

Before dawn on Wednesday the storm had inched to about 75 miles east-northeast of Durango, Mexico. As a hurricane it had already weakened to Category 3 before it made landfall Tuesday night in Sinaloa State, approximately 60 miles south of Mazatlán, a resort city of nearly 500,000.

Before Willa’s weakened, the federal authorities in Mexico had issued an “extraordinary emergency” decree for at least 19 municipalities along the Pacific Coast.