Hurricane Humberto sneaked up on south Texas and Louisiana overnight and crashed ashore with heavy rains and 137kph winds, killing at least one person.
The system rapidly became a Category 1 hurricane, then lost strength to become a tropical storm by midmorning on Thursday as it bore down on central Louisiana. Roads were flooded and power was knocked out, but the greatest concern was heavy rain falling in areas that have already been inundated by a rainy summer.
Humberto was not even a tropical storm until Wednesday afternoon, strengthening from a tropical depression with 56kph winds to a hurricane with 137kph winds in just 18 hours, said senior hurricane specialist James Franklin said at the US National Hurricane Center in Miami.
PHOTO: AP
"Before Humberto developed, you looked at the satellite imagery the day before and there was virtually nothing there. This really spun up out of thin air, very, very quickly," Franklin said. "We've never had any tropical cyclone go from where Humberto was to where Humberto got."
Surprising as Humberto was, forecasters said it may have been a blessing that it did not linger longer over warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, which could have given it time to develop into more than a minimal hurricane.
The only reported death was a man who died in southeast Texas when the carport at his home collapsed, police said.
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Ingrid became the ninth storm of the Atlantic hurricane season when it formed in the open ocean, the National Hurricane Center said.
At 5am yesterday, Ingrid's center was located about 1,300km east of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean.
Ingrid was moving toward the west-northwest near 11kph and was expected to continue at that pace for the next 24 hours.
Maximum sustained winds reached nearly 64kph with higher gusts. Tropical storm-force winds extended outward up to 80km from the center.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in