NEW ORLEANS — With Tropical Storm Edouard looming, the National Hurricane Center on Sunday night issued a hurricane watch for the coast of western Louisiana and eastern Texas.
The watch issued Sunday night means that hurricane conditions are possible from Edouard within the next 24 hours from Intracoastal City west to Port O’Connor, Texas.
The watch area did not include New Orleans.
The fifth named storm of the 2008 hurricane season has sustained maximum winds of about 50 miles per hour.
Late Sunday, Edouard was about 80 miles east-southeast off the mouth of the Mississippi River and about 390 miles east of Galveston, Texas. It was moving west at 5 mph and was expected to strengthen before making landfall Tuesday morning in Texas.
The Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters offer very favorable conditions for Edouard to strengthen in coming days, said Rebecca Waddington, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
She urged residents in the path of the storm to continue watching it and warned that tropical storms can still be very powerful.
While southwestern Texas still recovers from the damage of last month’s Hurricane Dolly, the other end of the state’s coast braced for several inches of rain and a potential storm surge.
A spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the Texas National Guard could be called into service.
Rainfall of 1 to 2 inches was expected in coastal Louisiana. About 2 to 4 inches was possible in southeast Texas, with isolated amounts up to 6 inches. Tides of 2 to 4 feet above normal levels were expected in parts of the warning area.
In Louisiana’s Terrebonne Parish, emergency director Jerry Richard said he had called in staff members to determine if the parish’s low-lying areas could be affected by flooding.
Many of the Gulf’s offshore oil and natural gas drilling platforms sit in the storm’s path.
Shell Oil Co. had not made any operational changes Sunday afternoon, but company officials were watching the storm closely, spokesman Shawn Wiggins said.
ExxonMobil Corp. had not evacuated any workers or cut production by Sunday evening, but the company was preparing its platforms for heavy wind and rain and considering whether to evacuate some workers, spokeswoman Margaret Ross said in an e-mail statement.
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