A tropical storm watch stretched along the Texas and Louisiana coastline on Tuesday as a storm system dropped heavy rain, and forecasters warned that some places could record up to a foot of rain by the end of the week as the system inches east hugging the coast.
The National Hurricane Center said there was a 60 percent chance that the storm would intensify into the first named storm of this year’s Atlantic hurricane season. If it does, it will be called Arthur, but even if it does not, forecasters warned that its moisture would dump excessive amounts of rain from South Texas to the Florida Panhandle throughout the week. For now, the system is officially called Potential Tropical Cyclone One.
Parts of Texas have already been inundated with heavy rain and flash flood warnings. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas issued a disaster declaration on Monday evening for 101 counties in the state, citing the risk from the storms and possible flooding.
A deluge of rain has fallen far inland since Sunday, bringing over nine inches in Caldwell, Texas, and from three to four inches in Austin, San Antonio and Houston.
On Wednesday, Houston is set to host its second World Cup match, between Portugal and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The threat of heavy rain was not a cause of concern for the match at the covered NRG Stadium, temporarily renamed Houston Stadium for the tournament.
But ahead of the match, organizers shortened hours for the city’s fan festival, where many have been gathering to watch matches. The city’s World Cup organizing committee said that the festival would open in the evening on Tuesday instead of earlier in the day. The shortened festivities on Tuesday could change further if severe weather made it unsafe for fans in the evening, organizers said. The fan festival was closed on Monday as heavy rain made its way through the area.
Judge Lina Hidalgo of Harris County, the top elected official in the Houston area, said that the county’s office of homeland security and emergency management was monitoring the threat of flooding.
“As those of us who live here know, Houston in the summer naturally brings tropical weather,” Judge Hidalgo said. “Our streets are designed to flood to convey water to the channels that then empty out into the ocean.”
Forecasters are fairly confident this will become a named storm but say it is likely to never look like a pure tropical storm on satellite. The storm is encountering something called wind shear, which can shred the storm and keep it from becoming an intense hurricane.
While forecasters believe this may develop tropical-storm-force winds (39 miles per hour or more), they have little indication to believe it will get stronger.
As the storm meanders off the Texas and Louisiana coasts over the next day or two, the rain will remain the most concerning threat. This has prompted meteorologists with the Weather Prediction Center to highlight the potential for flash flooding over the next few days from Corpus Christi, Texas, all the way into Birmingham, Ala.
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