Tropical Storm Alberto rumbled toward northeast Mexico early yesterday as the first named storm of the season, carrying heavy rains that left three people dead, but also brought hope to a region that had a prolonged, severe drought.
Mexican authorities downplayed the risk posed by Alberto and instead pinned their hopes on its ability to ease the parched region’s water needs.
“The [wind] speeds are not such as to consider it a risk,” Tamaulipas State Secretary of Hydrological Resources Raul Quiroga Alvarez said during a news conference late on Wednesday.
Photo: AFP
He suggested people greet Alberto happily.
“This is what we’ve been waiting for eight years in all of Tamaulipas,” he said.
Much of Mexico has been experiencing severe drought, with northern Mexico especially hard hit.
Quiroga said that the state’s reservoirs were low and Mexico owed the US a massive water debt in their shared use of the Rio Grande.
“This is a win-win event for Tamaulipas,” he said.
However, in nearby Nuevo Leon State, civil protection authorities reported three deaths linked to Alberto’s rains.
One man died in the La Silla river in Monterrey and two minors died from electric shocks in the municipality of Allende, they said.
Local media reported that the minors were riding a bicycle in the rain.
Nuevo Leon Governor Samuel Garcia wrote on social media platform X that metro and public transportation services would be suspended in Monterrey from Wednesday night until midday yesterday when Alberto has passed.
Late on Wednesday, Alberto was about 64km east of Tampico, Mexico, and about 402km south-southeast of Brownsville, Texas, with maximum sustained winds of 85kph, the US National Hurricane Center said.
Alberto brought rains and flooding to the coast of Texas as well.
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