CANCUN, Mexico (NewsNation Now) — Hurricane Zeta has made landfall on the Caribbean coast of the eastern Yucatan Peninsula, as the central U.S. Gulf Coast braces for the storm to come ashore midweek.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Zeta made landfall just north of Tulum late Monday, and currently carries maximum sustained winds of 75 mph.

Zeta — the earliest ever 27th named storm of the Atlantic season — was moving northwest at around 13 mph after being nearly stationary over the weekend.

Forecasters said the storm will likely weaken as it moves over the Yucatan Peninsula Tuesday morning, but then regain strength as it approaches the Gulf Coast Wednesday.

A hurricane watch was posted from Morgan City, Louisiana, to the Mississippi-Alabama state line. The storm could make landfall anywhere from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, forecasters said.

In Cancun, some boats that normally carry tourists took refuge in a nearby lagoon channel.

Boat captain Francisco Sosa Rosado noted they had to perform the same maneuver barely three week ago, when the area was hit by a stronger Hurricane Delta, which made landfall with top winds of 110 mph.

“With Delta, the gusts of wind were very strong … the anchor lines were at risk of breaking,” Sosa Rosado said. “I hope it won’t be as bad with this hurricane.”

Trees felled by Hurricane Delta barely three weeks earlier still litter parts of Cancun, stacked along roadsides and in parks. There is concern they could become projectiles when Zeta scrapes across the peninsula. There are still a number of stoplights around the vacation destination that have not been repaired since Delta.

Local authorities are taking the storm seriously, but with a distinctly less alarmed tone than when Delta strengthened to a Category 4 storm off the coast. Quintana Roo state suspended alcohol sales Monday and Gov. Carlos Joaquín González said everyone should be off the streets by Monday afternoon.

Residents were pulling their boats from the water, but the sort of panic buying seen in the run-up to Delta was not evident Monday.

State officials reported nearly 60,000 tourists in the state as of midweek. The state government said 71 shelters were being readied for tourists or residents who might need them.

Joaquín said he hoped it would not be necessary in most cases to move guests out of their hotels.

The government was still handing out aid, including sheet roofing, to Yucatan residents hit by Hurricane Delta and Tropical Storm Gamma earlier this month.

Zeta had been dawdling Sunday because it was trapped between two strong high pressure systems to the east and west, said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.

The hurricane center said Zeta could bring 4 to 8 inches of rain to Mexico, the Cayman Islands and parts of Cuba, before drenching the central U.S. Gulf Coast.

With a possible landfall anywhere from Lousiana to the Florida Panhandle, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards urged his state’s citizens to monitor the storm, and the state activated its Crisis Action Team.

Zeta broke the record for the previous earliest 27th Atlantic named storm that formed Nov. 29, 2005, Klotzbach said.

This year’s season has so many storms that the hurricane center has turned to the Greek alphabet after running out of assigned names.

Zeta is the furthest into the Greek alphabet the Atlantic season has gone. There was also a Tropical Storm Zeta in 2005, but that year had 28 storms because meteorologists later went back and found they missed one, which then became an “unnamed named storm,” Klotzbach said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report