A storm that appeared as a blip on the Gulf Coast radar late last week could reach hurricane strength before it bears down, possibly on the Southeast Texas coast, by Tuesday morning.Tropical Storm Edouard may intensify into a Category 1 hurricane by the time it makes landfall, meteorologists said.
The fast-building storm leaves residents and emergency officials little time to prepare for the high winds and heavy rainfall.
"Since it's come up so quickly and so close to the coast, it's not going to be like (Hurricane) Dolly where we were watching it for a week," said Chris McKinney, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service. "People need to take it seriously and allow the possibility that it could be a low-end hurricane."
Edouard is aimed directly at Southeast Texas, with a landfall likely somewhere between Corpus Christi and the Texas-Lousiana border. For now most computer models bring the storm straight into Galveston Island, but there's typically some error in forecasts 36 hours before landfall.The storm is expected to bring 2 or 3 inches of rain to most of the region - more in the coastal communities it hits the hardest - and considerably more if the system slows.
The storm's winds at landfall are much harder to project. On Sunday the system developed from a center of low pressure into a 50 mph tropical storm, and some computer models forecast Edouard to become a weak hurricane before landfall.
Hurricane forecasters typically have trouble projecting when hurricanes over the Gulf of Mexico's warm waters will rapidly intensify, as Hurricane Humberto did last year before striking Texas.
"Storms never do exactly what we expect. We always prepare for one level of intensity higher than it is," said Mark Sloan, coordinator for the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.