Hurricane Dolly churned over the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday toward the United States-Mexican border, forcing thousands in Mexico to evacuate as US oil rigs put staff ashore and the US Navy sheltered aircraft.
Packing sustained winds of 130km/h, the second hurricane of the season was about 140km south-east of the Texas border town of Brownsville, the US National Hurricane Centre said.
The storm was moving north-west at 15km/h, the centre said at 6am GMT.
”On the forecast track the centre of Dolly will be along the coast near the Texas/Mexico border around midday” on Wednesday, it added, warning that ”preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion”.
Authorities have issued a hurricane warning for the coast of Texas from Brownsville to Corpus Christi and for the north-eastern coast of Mexico from Rio San Fernando northward to the US border.
”It’s not going to be a picnic on Padre Island,” National Hurricane Centre director Bill Read told CNN, referring to the long, narrow barrier island along the Texas coast that is dotted with resort communities.
”Doppler radar observations from Brownsville suggest that the hurricane is becoming better organised and some strengthening is expected prior to landfall,” the centre said.
A category-one storm is the lowest rating in the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale, but the centre predicted 15cm to 25cm of rain over south Texas and north-east Mexico in the coming days.
Isolated areas were expected to see as many as 38cm of rain along with massive waves and flooding at the point of impact, the NHC said.
”Coastal storm-surge flooding of four to six feet [1,2m to 1,8m] above normal tide levels along with large and dangerous battering waves can be expected near and to the north of where the centre makes landfall,” it added. ”A few tornadoes are possible overnight across the lower and middle Texas coasts.”
The hurricane led to the evacuation of more than 23 000 people from coastal areas in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, Governor Eugenio Hernandez said, adding that he had requested the federal government to declare a state of emergency in his jurisdiction.
The US Navy plans to move more than 100 aircraft from its Corpus Christi naval air station, Texas, to other locations in New Mexico and Texas, said US Navy spokesperson Tamsen Reese.
Some, but not all, oil drilling companies evacuated personnel from their offshore rigs as companies waited to see where the storm would make landfall, the Houston Chronicle reported.
”The first storm in always gets the adrenaline pumping, and it helps bring everybody into the mind set for hurricane season,” said BP spokesperson Tom Mueller, quoted by the Chronicle. Dolly is the season’s first inside the Gulf.
Texas Governor Rick Perry activated 1 200 National Guard troops and other emergency crews in advance of the storm.
The NHC has forecast an especially active 2008 weather season, saying there could be up to nine hurricanes and 12 tropical storms in the Atlantic region. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to the end of November.
About 35-million people live in the most hurricane-prone US region, the south-eastern coastline running from the states of North Carolina to Texas, according to the US Census Bureau. — Sapa-AFP