Sudden storm brings 130km/h winds

HUMBERTO, the first hurricane to hit the US in two years, sneaked up on south Texas and Louisiana overnight and crashed ashore yesterday with heavy rains and 80mph (129km/h) winds, killing at least one person.

The system rapidly became a Category 1 hurricane, then weakened to a tropical storm by midmorning and bore into central Louisiana. Roads flooded and power was out, but the greatest concern was heavy rain falling in areas already inundated by a wet summer.

Humberto didn’t exist until late on Wednesday afternoon, and wasn’t even a tropical storm until midday, strengthening from a tropical depression with 55km/h winds to a hurricane with 135km/h winds in just 18 hours, senior hurricane specialist James Franklin said at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

“To put this development in perspective, no tropical cyclone in the historical record has ever reached this intensity at a faster rate near landfall. It would be nice to know, some day, why this happened,” said Franklin.

Humberto made landfall less than 80km from where Hurricane Rita did in 2005.