Caribbean and US brace for tropical storms

A hurricane watch was issued for a portion of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean as Tropical Storm Dean slowly moved across the Atlantic Ocean, forecasters said.

The watch, in effect for St Lucia, Martinique, Guadeloupe and its dependencies, Saba and St Eustaties, was issued last night by local governments.

A hurricane watch means hurricane conditions are possible in the next 36 hours.

As of 11pm EDT (4.00am Irish time), Dean was centred about 625 miles (1,000 kilometres) east of Barbados, according to the National Hurricane Centre.

It was moving west near 23 mph (37 kph), and was expected to continue the same path over the next 24 hours.

Maximum sustained winds were near 70 mph (113 kph).

Dean was expected to gain strength and become a hurricane sometime today, forecasters said.

A hurricane has maximum sustained winds of 74 mph (119 kph).

Meanwhile, South Texas braced for Tropical Storm Erin to bring torrential downpours to a state that has already had one of its rainiest summers on record.

As the storm’s outermost bands of rain touched the Texas coast early yesterday afternoon, homeowners had already started heading to hardware stores in the Rio Grande Valley for supplies to board up their houses.

Governor Rick Perry ordered emergency vehicles and personnel, including National Guard troops, to the Harlingen and Corpus Christi areas.

“Because storms have saturated much of our state this summer, many communities in this storm’s projected path are at high risk of dangerous flash flooding,” Perry said in a statement.

Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos, the top elected official for the state’s southernmost county, urged residents to evacuate trailers and mobile homes on South Padre Island, but he said that the storm appeared to have veered northward and that few holidaymakers appeared nervous enough to leave.

Out in the Gulf, Shell Oil Co evacuated 188 people from offshore facilities in the storm’s path.

Erin formed on Tuesday as the fifth depression of the Atlantic hurricane season and was upgraded to a tropical storm yesterday when its maximum sustained speed hit 40 mph (64 kph), the National Hurricane Centre said.

The threshold for tropical storm status is 39 mph (63 kph).

At 11pm EDT (0400 BST), the storm was centred 140 miles southeast of Corpus Christi and about 200 miles south-southwest of Galveston, according to the National Hurricane Centre in Miami. Its top wind speed remained at 40 mph (64 kph).

Erin was moving towards the northwest at around 14 mph (23 kph) and was expected to continue following that track for at least 24 hours. Erin’s centre was expected to be very near the Texas coast this morning, the centre said.

Erin was likely too close to land to gain enough wind speed to become a hurricane, with sustained wind of at least 74 mph (119 kph), said National Weather Service forecaster Tony Abbott in Brownsville. But the centre said last night it could strengthen slightly before landfall.

Isolated tornadoes were also possible along the middle Texas Gulf today, the centre said.

In the Pacific, Flossie was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm after sideswiping Hawaii’s Big Island with only intermittent rain and moderate winds.

It was a close call: Flossie approached the biggest and southernmost of the Hawaiian Islands with winds as high as 140 mph (225 kph) earlier in the week, making it a Category 4 storm. If it had made landfall, the powerful hurricane would have been the first to hit the isles since Iniki slammed Kauai in 1992, killing six people.

Hurricane specialists expect this year’s Atlantic hurricane season – June 1 to November 30 --to be busier than average, with as many as 16 tropical storms, nine of them strengthening into hurricanes. Ten tropical storms developed in the Atlantic last year, but only two made landfall in the United States.