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This satellite-based image shows Hurricane Paul early Tuesday.

Paul weakened into a tropical storm overnight and was quickly losing strength as it skirted the west coast of Mexico's Baja California early Wednesday.

Mexico on Tuesday had issued a hurricane warning from Santa Fe northward to Punta Abreojos on the country's western Baja peninsula. On the east coast, a hurricane warning stretched from Mulege to San Evaristo.

Some rain from Paul should even make it to south Texas on Tuesday, weather.com reported.

The rain didn't scare many tourists on Mexico's southern Baja peninsula who saw the impending arrival of Hurricane Paul as a minor inconvenience.

Some went to Medano Beach on Monday to watch the heavy surf. Anthony Curtis of San Diego went for a stroll with his wife.

"It's only rain falling from the clouds," he said. "The hotel told us not to worry."

Paul had already passed by the heavily populated tourist areas of Los Cabos at the tip of the peninsula, and the capital, La Paz, on the eastern Gulf of California. But the state government as a precaution readied 143 shelters that could take up to 35,000 people in the tourist zone. Classes were suspended for Tuesday statewide, and ports were closed to small vessels in the capital, La Paz, Los Cabos and Comondu. 

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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National Hurricane Center.

The circled system has a 70 percent chance to become a tropical storm.

A tropical storm is likely to form in the Atlantic Ocean as the system moves west-northwest towards the Caribbean, the National Hurricane Center said Tuesday.

"This disturbance has a high chance, 70 percent, of becoming a tropical cyclone during the next 48 hours," it said in an advisory. The center's next update is at 8 p.m. ET.

The system was about 925 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands.

The next named Atlantic storm will be Oscar.

The Atlantic hurricane season, which officially runs through Nov. 30, has already seen 14 named storms. Eight of those have become hurricanes.

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