Hurricane Ida swiped the resort city of Cancun yesterday with bands of wind and rain as it steamed north towards the Gulf of Mexico, where officials issued a hurricane watch for coastal Louisiana and Mississippi.

Gusts of wind whipped palm trees and fishermen pulled their boats in and tied them down along Mexico's Caribbean coast as rain and strong waves moved ashore in Cancun and neighbouring Puerto Juarez. Tourists, meanwhile, tried to continue vacationing as usual despite the Category 1 storm.

"I figure probably in a couple hours we'll be stuck inside," said Julie Randolph, 40, a social worker from Ormand Beach, Florida, who braved the rain to jog along the near-empty beach.

Comfortable

Randolph said she was monitoring Ida's progress on her iPhone. "I'm always concerned about storms, but I feel comfortable and safe in my surroundings," she said. "We would have left if we felt threatened. We still can leave now."

The Cancun airport was still open and there were no plans to close it, according to airport spokesman Eduardo Rivadeneira.

Ida was packing winds of about 90mph (150kph). The storm was passing about 60 miles (100 kilometres) offshore from Cancun, and 85 miles (135 kilometres) south-west of Cuba.

It was moving north-west about 12mph (19kph) on a projected path that could have it arriving at the US Gulf coast around Tuesday.