Tropical Storm Edouard Lands on Texas-Louisiana Line With Flood Threat

Tropical Storm Edouard came ashore on Tuesday afternoon near Johnson Bayou, Louisiana, just east of the Texas border, with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. The center said landfall came at 2:20 p.m. Central time, about 15 miles south-southeast of Port Arthur, Texas, and 30 miles west-southwest of Cameron, Louisiana. Minimum central pressure was 996 millibars, and the storm was moving northwest at about 8 mph.

A National Ocean Service station near Texas Point reported a sustained wind of 57 mph and a gust to 71 mph, the hurricane center said. Fox Weather reported that a 90 mph gust was recorded in Port Arthur and that the National Weather Service reported 4 inches of rainfall there.

The main danger is water. Fox Weather said forecasters expect widespread rain of 3 to 6 inches across the Upper Texas Coast and east-central Texas, with isolated totals up to 9 inches through Wednesday. Houston and parts of southwestern Louisiana, including Lake Charles, face a level 2 of 4 risk of flash flooding. A level 3 threat covers parts of Southeast Texas’s Piney Woods and Big Thicket, including Beaumont and Livingston.

Power was already failing. Fox Weather reported more than 75,000 customers without electricity in Texas as of 9:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Texas officials said they had less time than usual to prepare. The Texas Tribune reported that Gov. Greg Abbott deployed rescue aircraft, boats and high-water vehicles and activated the state emergency operations center with 1,500 personnel. The Texas Division of Emergency Management said the state had less lead time than usual because the threat became clear only shortly before the storm arrived. The American Red Cross opened shelters in Polk and Tyler counties.

Fox Weather’s forecasters cautioned that the storm is hard to predict. “It’s extremely hard to predict when these things happen,” the FOX Forecast Center said, adding that, depending on how quickly Edouard moves inland, “there could be flooding well north of Houston on Wednesday.”

Officials also worried that the storm’s winds could ignite fires in hot, dry conditions, the Tribune reported; the Ross Fire had already burned more than 90,000 acres.