MEXICO CITY - Hurricane Jimena, churning in the Pacific Ocean off the western coast of Mexico, strengthened Sunday and was upgraded to a Category Three storm, the US National Hurricane Center said.

The center said Jimena now packed sustained winds of nearly 115 miles (185 kilometers) an hour and moved northwest at 12 miles (19 kilometers) per hour.

Further strengthening was forecast. "Jimena could become a Category Four hurricane during the next day or so," the NHC warned.

Earlier Mexican authorities assured that Jimena, which is currently located 305 miles (490 kilometers) south of Cabo Corrientes, Mexico, and about 550 miles (885 kilometers) south of the southern tip of Baja California, was not expected to make landfall.

The Miami-based center appeared to concur, saying that at the forecast track, "Jimena will move parallel to, but offshore of the west coast of Mexico."

Jimena has already caused "intense heavy rain with flooding in the lowlands and landslides in mountains" in the states of Guerrero, Michoacan, Colima and Jalisco on the Pacific coast, a Mexican weather official said earlier Saturday.

A category three storm on the Saffir-Simpson one-to-five scale means it threatens to cause extensive damage.

In the Atlantic, forecasters Saturday downgraded Danny from a tropical storm to a depression as it made its way up the US east coast.

Even though Danny bypassed the outer banks of North Carolina, northeastern US states as well as the Canadian Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were warned to monitor the weather event as it churned northward.