Coastal Mexico, Texas prepare for storm

September 7, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico

Mexican authorities urged people to move to shelters while officials in Texas distributed sandbags and warned of flash floods as Tropical Storm Hermine strengthened and headed toward the northwestern Gulf coast on Monday.

Hermine was expected to make landfall around midnight just south of the U.S.-Mexico border, threatening to bring as much as one foot of rainfall to some areas battered by Hurricane Alex in June. Remnant rains from Alex killed at least 12 people in flooding in Mexico.

Hermine “will briefly be over Mexico, and then we’re expecting it to produce very heavy rainfall over south Texas,” said Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist at the U.S. National Hurricane Center. “We’re expecting widespread rainfall totals of 4 to 8 inches with isolated amounts of a foot possible. Especially in the hilly and mountainous terrain that could cause life-threatening flash flooding.”

The storm’s winds strengthened to about 65 mph, and by Monday afternoon, it was located about 80 miles south-southeast of Brownsville, Texas. Tropical-storm-force winds extended out up to 105 miles from the storm’s center.

Though it is likely to hit just south of Matamoros — across the border from Brownsville — at tropical-storm force, it has the potential to build into minimal hurricane strength, Blake said.

A hurricane watch was issued for the area from Rio San Fernando, Mexico, northward to Baffin Bay in Texas.

The cattle-ranching region is one the most dangerous in Mexico’s turf war between two drug cartels. It is the same area 72 migrants were killed two weeks ago in what it believed to be Mexico’s worst drug-gang massacre to date.

Mexican emergency officials urged people living in low-lying coastal areas to move to shelters, but there were no immediate evacuation plans.

On the Texas coast, emergency officials readied pumping equipment and distributed sandbags in Cameron County, said John Cavazos, the county’s emergency management coordinator. He said they also are suggesting that people in recreational vehicles in county parks along the coast should move.

The officials are worried about flooding because the ground is already saturated from earlier rains. Some areas could get up to 12 inches of rain, he said.

No evacuations had been ordered in Texas.