Matamoros, Mexico - The first Atlantic hurricane of the year plowed ahead toward a collision with the Mexican Gulf coast and south Texas on Wednesday, whipping up high waves that frustrated oil-spill cleanup efforts and delivering tar balls and globs of crude onto already soiled beaches.

Hurricane Alex flooded roads and forced thousands of people to evacuate fishing villages as it bore down on the northeastern Mexican coast.

Braving horizontal sheets of rain, Mexican marines went door-to-door in the small fishing community of Playa Bagdad, trying to evacuate villagers from rickety wooden shacks.

At least 50 people were easily persuaded to get aboard buses to shelters, but holdouts could be seen peeking through windows. One man rebuffed the navy's offer and quickly shut his plywood door.

"We're worried it's going to come hard," said Macedonia Villegas as she and her son readied their house before leaving with the marines. Surf pounded the nearby shore, and a lagoon swelled behind her home.

Emergency-preparedness workers also planned to evacuate 2,500 people from coastal areas east of Matamoros, said Civil Protection Director Saul Hernandez, who added that he was most concerned about 13,000 families in low-lying areas where there are few public utilities or city services.

The storm was far from the Gulf oil spill, but cleanup vessels were sidelined by the hurricane's ripple effects. Six-foot waves churned up by the hurricane splattered beaches in Louisiana, Alabama and Florida with oil and tar balls.

Alex, which had winds of 90 mph (150 kph), was the first June hurricane in the Atlantic since 1995, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.

Bands of heavy rains quickly inundated roads in Matamoros, a worrisome sign with Alex expected to dump as much as 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain in the region, with perhaps 20 inches (50 centimeters) in isolated areas.

The hurricane could become a Category 2 storm with winds of 96 mph (154 kph) before slamming into the coastline Wednesday evening or early today about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Matamoros and Brownsville, Texas, the Hurricane Center said. The flat, marshy region is prone to flooding.

Many in the border city braved the growing rains: Commuters struggled to get to work, pedestrians crossed the bridge connecting Matamoros and Brownsville and newspaper hawkers manned the less-flooded intersections.

One flooded stretch of road nearly kept Mari Ponce from getting to her job at the Mundo Shelter, which was preparing for 800 people evacuated from fishing communities along the coast.

"It's not going to hit us (directly), but Matamoros is a place that really floods," she said.