South Texas yesterday braced for flooding after Hanna roared ashore as a hurricane the day before, bringing winds that lashed the Gulf Coast with rain and storm surge to a part of the country trying to cope with a spike in coronavirus cases.
The first hurricane of this year’s Atlantic cyclone season made landfall twice as a Category 1 storm on Saturday afternoon within the span of little over an hour.
The first landfall happened at about 5pm about 24km north of Port Mansfield, which is about 209km south of Corpus Christi. The second landfall took place nearby in eastern Kenedy County.
Photo: AP
Hanna came ashore with maximum sustained winds of 145kph.
Forecasters downgraded Hanna to a tropical storm early yesterday.
The storm had maximum sustained winds of 115kph, the US National Hurricane Center said.
Chris Birchfield, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Brownsville, Texas, said residents needed to remain alert.
Hanna’s winds weakened, but the storm’s real threat remained heavy rainfall.
“We’re not even close to over at this point,” Birchfield said. “We’re still expecting catastrophic flooding.”
Forecasters said Hanna could bring 15cm to 30cm of rain through last night — with isolated totals of 46cm — in addition to coastal swells that could cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.
Some areas in South Texas had already reported receiving up to 23cm of rain, including Cameron County, which borders Mexico and where Brownsville is located.
South Texas officials’ plans for any possible rescues, shelters and monitoring of the storm will have the pandemic in mind and incorporate social distancing guidelines and mask wearing.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Saturday said that some sheltering would take place in hotel rooms so people could be separated.
“We cannot allow this hurricane to lead to a more catastrophically deadly event by stoking additional spread of COVID-19 that could lead to fatalities,” he said.
Abbott said he has issued a disaster declaration for 32 counties and had asked the federal government to approve a similar declaration.
Cameron County planned to open at least three evacuation shelters. Other counties and cities throughout South Texas had also opened shelters, with many requiring face masks.
Mexico’s northeastern most states, Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon just to its west, also took precautions ahead of the storm’s arrival.
Tamaulipas disinfected shelters to try to avoid spreading COVID-19, Tamaulipas Governor Francisco Cabeza de Vaca tweeted.
David Leon, the national director of the civil protection department, told Milenio TV on Saturday that as many as 800 shelters could be activated in the parts of Mexico that could be affected by Hanna.
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