HOUSTON [—] The tropical weather season revved up Thursday as the Atlantic’s first hurricane formed and quickly strengthened. Tropical Storm Erin’s remnants soaked rain-weary Texas, snarling rush-hour traffic and killing at least one person.
Even as they fetched dozens of stranded drivers, authorities in Houston and San Antonio looked over their shoulders at Hurricane Dean, a Category 2 storm building in the Atlantic as it neared islands in the eastern Caribbean. Hurricane warnings were issued for some islands, and a tropical storm watch was issued for the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
The thunderstorms from Erin brought 7 inches of rain to parts of San Antonio and Houston, where one person died and another was injured when the waterlogged roof of a storage unit outside a grocery store collapsed, Fire Chief Omero Longoria said. The National Hurricane Center said 10 inches of rain was possible in some areas.
The flooding “has been a good training session, if you will,” as officials track Dean’s progress, said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the top elected official in the county that surrounds Houston.
More rain was moving in Thursday from the Gulf [—] 3 to 6 inches was forecast for Thursday night [—] which authorities found particularly worrisome because the ground was saturated.
“It’s like a wet sponge,” Emmett said.
Summer storms have poured record rainfall across Texas and parts of Oklahoma and Kansas, with floods killing 16 people since mid-June. One July storm dropped 17 inches of rain in 24 hours and brought Texas out of a more than decade-long drought.
The dangers of a slow-moving storm system are well known in Houston, where Tropical Storm Allison stalled for several days in 2001, soaking the flat, low-lying city. After passing Houston, it returned, dumping about 20 inches of rain in eight hours. About two dozen people died, most of the city was without power and entire neighborhoods were destroyed.
Still, state and local officials said Erin was a relatively calm rehearsal for the hurricane season.
Hurricane specialists expect this year’s Atlantic hurricane season [—] June 1 to Nov. 30 [—] to be busier than average, with as many as 16 tropical storms, nine of them strengthening into hurricanes. Ten tropical storms developed in the Atlantic last year, but only two made landfall in the United States.
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