Hurricane Patricia has grown into a “potentially catastrophic” category 5 storm as it bears down on Mexico’s central Pacific Coast.

Officials declared a state of emergency and handed out sandbags in preparation for flooding as steady rain began to fall in the area around the port of Manzanillo ahead of an expected landfall on Friday afternoon.

In Manzanillo, one of the country’s principal ports, Luz Adriana Limon Rojas, of Colima state’s civil defense agency, said skies were still calm, if cloudy, and no evacuation orders had been issued.

Luis Felipe Puente, Mexico’s civil defense coordinator, said schools would be closed in Colima state, which is home to Manzanillo.

“We are calm,” said Gabriel Lopez, a worker at Las Hadas Hotel in the city. “We don’t know what direction (the storm) will take, but apparently it’s headed this way. ... If there is an emergency we will take care of the people. There are rooms that are not exposed to wind or glass.”

The US National Hurricane Center in Miami warned that preparations should be rushed to completion, saying the storm could cause coastal flooding, destructive waves and flash floods.

“This is an extremely dangerous, potentially catastrophic hurricane,” meteorologist Dennis Feltgen said.

Luz Adriana Limon Rojas of Colima state’s civil defense agency said the area has problems with drainage during storms.

“The neighborhood leaders have come for sacks to fill with sand,” she said.

The federal government declared a state of emergency for 56 municipalities in the storm’s projected path in the states of Colima, Nayarit and Jalisco.

By late Thursday night, Patricia’s maximum sustained winds had increased to 160 mph (260 kmh) — a category 5 storm, the highest designation on the Saffir-Simpson scale used to quantify a hurricane’s wind strength.

Patricia was centered about 200 miles (320 kilometers) south-southwest of Manzanillo and was moving northwest at 13 mph (20 kph) on a projected track to come onshore between Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta sometime on Friday afternoon or evening.

Some weakening was forecast before then, but the hurricane center said it would still be “extremely dangerous” when it makes landfall.

A hurricane warning was in effect for the Mexican coast from San Blas to Punta San Telmo, a stretch of coast that includes Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta. A broader area was under hurricane watch, tropical storm warning, or tropical storm watch.

The hurricane center said Patricia was expected to bring rainfall of 15 to 30cm (6 to 12 inches), with even more in some locations. Tropical storm conditions were expected to reach land late Thursday or early Friday, complicating any remaining preparation work at that point.

Feltgen said Patricia also posedproblems for Texas. Forecast models indicate that after the storm breaks up over land, remnants of its tropical moisture will likely combine with and contribute to heavy rainfall that is already soaking Texas independently of the hurricane, he said.

“It’s only going to make a bad situation worse,” he said.