Thursday, September 13, 2007

Hurricane Humberto slams into Texas

Reuters: Hurricane Humberto rumbled onto the upper Texas coast on Thursday with 85 mile per hour (135 kph) winds and heavy rains that threatened widespread flooding. The storm, which brewed up in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, made landfall near High Island, about 30 miles northeast of Galveston, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in a report at 3:10 a.m. EDT (0710 GMT). Humberto had been expected to come ashore as a tropical storm, but suddenly strengthened in the gulf's warm waters.

It struck a lightly populated area, and there were no reports of damage or injuries. The storm was expected to plow through southeastern Texas and head east into Louisiana, where officials braced for flooding.

Humberto was a minimal, Category 1 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale, but forecasters said it could dump up to 15 inches of rain because it was dawdling along at just 8 mph (13 kph). Galveston reported 5 inches of rain as Humberto eased past on Wednesday, headed toward the Texas-Louisiana border.

A hurricane warning was in place from High Island to Cameron, Louisiana, which was still recovering Hurricane Rita in 2005. Rita struck the Texas-Louisiana border region three weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans….

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