Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Ida made landfall in eastern Nicaragua today and may enter the Gulf of Mexico as a tropical storm within five days after passing over Honduras, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Ida was centered about 75 miles (125 kilometers) north of the port city of Bluefields, Nicaragua, as of about 9 a.m. local time, the Miami-based center said in a statement. It was moving northwest at 6 miles per hour. The country’s president declared a national alert.

The storm had maximum sustained winds of about 75 mph, making it Category 1, the least-intense hurricane on the five- step Saffir-Simpson scale. Ida may return to tropical-storm strength, with winds below 74 mph, as it moves inland over Nicaragua before weakening into a depression, the center said.

A hurricane warning was declared for Nicaragua’s eastern coast from Bluefields north to Puerto Cabezas, while a hurricane watch and a tropical-storm warning were in effect northward to the Honduras border.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega decreed a national alert as Ida approached, said General Mario Perezcassar, head of the county’s civil defense body, in a phone interview. More than 2,200 people have been evacuated from islands off the Caribbean coast and from shanties near Bluefields amid heavy rain last night and this morning, he said.

Flash Floods, Mudslides

Eastern Nicaragua and eastern Honduras are forecast to get as much as 25 inches (64 centimeters) of rain, which may produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides, the U.S. agency said. A storm surge may raise water levels in eastern Nicaragua as much as 3 feet above ground level, with battering waves.

The storm is forecast to pass over Honduras as a depression and then re-intensify into a tropical storm as it moves back into the Caribbean this weekend. It should pass just east of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on the morning of Nov. 9 and then north into the Gulf of Mexico, home to about a quarter of U.S. oil production, according to a five-day track prediction.

Crude oil for December delivery fell 62 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $79.78 a barrel at 9:44 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures have gained 79 percent this year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Dolmetsch in New York at cdolmetsch@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 5, 2009 10:39 EST