A re-energized Tropical Storm Cristobal on Saturday advanced toward the US Gulf Coast, spawning a tornado in Florida and bringing the heavy rains that already caused flooding and mudslides in Mexico and Central America.
After weakening to a tropical depression while moving over land in Mexico’s Gulf coast, Cristobal on Friday headed back into the southern Gulf of Mexico from the Yucatan Peninsula and powered back up into a tropical storm.
Forecasters said it would arrive on US soil late yesterday, but was not expected to grow into a hurricane.
Photo: Reuters
The US National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm was expected to slowly strengthen until making landfall last night along the US Gulf Coast.
However, the storm already made its presence felt on Saturday evening, spawning a tornado that touched down near downtown Orlando, Florida, the US National Weather Service said.
The twister just missed a group of protesters at Lake Eola at about 7:30pm. There appeared to be no injuries, but tree limbs were knocked down, and there were reports of power outages.
“Yes, it is related to the tropical storm that is well to our west,” said Scott Kelly, a meteorologist with the weather service in Melbourne, Florida. “But the tropical storm provided a lot of low-level shear and that has allowed for some tornadoes to form over Central Florida.”
The threat for tornadoes would continue overnight, he said.
Cristobal’s maximum sustained winds had strengthened to 85kph by early Saturday and it was moving north at 19kph.
The hurricane center said the storm could cause heavy rains from East Texas to Florida into early this week.
A tropical storm watch was posted for the northern Gulf of Mexico coast from Intracoastal City, Louisiana, to the Alabama-Florida border.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has declared a state of emergency to prepare for the storm’s possible arrival.
“Now is the time to make your plans, which should include the traditional emergency items along with masks and hand sanitizer as we continue to battle the coronavirus pandemic,” Edward said in a statement released on Thursday.
The hurricane center’s forecast path puts Alabama on Cristobal’s east side, far from where the center was expected to come ashore. Still, the southwest part of the state was expected to get gusty winds, heavy rain, storm surge and possibly tornadoes as the storm moved closer to the coast.
“Sunday will be very wet and windy as Cristobal passes west of the area, placing the central Gulf Coast on the ‘dirty’ eastern side of the storm,” the weather service said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS