Tropical Storm Edouard formed Monday in the Gulf of Mexico and was moving toward Texas and Louisiana on Tuesday morning, with forecasters expecting it to make landfall in Texas the same day. Early Tuesday, the storm was about 135 kilometers southeast of Cameron, Louisiana, and 185 kilometers southeast of Port Arthur, Texas, while carrying maximum sustained winds of 65 kilometers per hour.
That is why people were searching for Tropical Storm Edouard on Tuesday: it was no longer just a system over open water, but a live threat to the upper Texas coast and the Houston area. The National Hurricane Center said the storm was moving west-northwest at 11 kilometers per hour, a pace slow enough to keep rain bands over the same communities for hours.
Greg Abbott said the biggest problem expected from the storm was flooding, and the forecast backed him up. Meteorologists called for 7 to 15 centimeters of rain in the Houston metro area and as much as 22 centimeters in some parts of the upper Texas coast. In the most intense bursts, more than 10 centimeters of rain could fall in an hour, a rate the National Hurricane Center said would likely trigger flash flooding in low-lying and urban areas.
Orlando Alanis said Texas was ready for what he called the first major storm of the season, and crews worked Monday to clear dry vegetation that could be ignited by lightning and spread fire quickly. The state may indeed be prepared in the practical sense, but the forecast still leaves little room for comfort: a storm can arrive with modest winds and still overwhelm drainage systems if the rain comes hard enough, fast enough.
Edouard was the main threat on Tuesday, but it was not the only system in the wider weather picture. The remnants of Hurricane Dolly brought rain and thunderstorms to parts of Haití, República Dominicana, Islas Turcas y Caicos and Bahamas, while Tropical Storm Lowell was far out in the Pacific, about 1,110 kilometers southeast of Hilo, Hawai, and moving away from land. For Texas, the next step was simple and immediate: the storm was expected to come ashore Tuesday, and the question was how much water it would leave behind before it did.
