HURRICANE OTIS!

The newly formed Hurrican Otis neared the Baja California peninsula on Friday.

By midday Friday, Otis had maximum sustained winds of about 85 mph and was about 130 miles south-southwest of the Los Cabos resort area at the tip of the peninsula, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

The storm was still growing and the Center said Otis could become a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 96 mph or above by Saturday.

It was expected to skirt the resort areas while moving at 8 mph on a track that would carry it to the sparsely populated central west coast of the peninsula by Monday, but the Hurricane Center cautioned that any lurch to the east could bring the center near land by late Friday.

Officials closed the port in Cabo San Lucas to all navigation and began evacuating people from endangered neighborhoods to four shelters.

The Hurricane Center and it said that the storm´s outer bands could bring up to 4 inches of rain over the southern end of the peninsula by late Friday.