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Hurricane Claudette Bears Down on Texas

Posted on: Tuesday, 15 July 2003, 06:00 CDT

An invigorated Hurricane Claudette bore down on the Texas shore early Tuesday, lashing the coast with heavy wind and rain and chasing some people to higher ground inland.

Minor flooding was reported in areas along the coast south of Houston, including Galveston and Brazoria, but no damage or injuries were reported. Wind gusted to 50 mph in Galveston.

A steady stream of pickup trucks drove out of Port O'Connor, towing boats and packed with belongings as residents and vacationers took the only road away from the Gulf of Mexico.

Charlie Keller, who had been fishing with friends from San Antonio, said they had hoped Claudette would veer elsewhere but "we just decided it was best to get back to town." He said they had boarded up the house where they were staying and packed up early Tuesday morning.

Port O'Connor, a village of vacation homes and shrimpers, was destroyed by a strong hurricane in 1919 and again by the Category 4 monster Carla in 1961.

Claudette, upgraded from a tropical storm during the night, had maximum sustained wind blowing at 75 mph. Its 25-mile-diameter eye was tightening, with forecasters predicting some increase in wind speed before the center reached shore during the afternoon or evening.

At 9 a.m. EDT Tuesday, Claudette's center was 45 miles east of Port O'Connor, moving west-northwest at about 11 mph.

The storm, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, was expected to make landfall in the area of Port O'Connor or Palacios, the National Hurricane Center said.

The entire Texas coastline was under some sort of advisory, with a hurricane warning stretching from Baffin Bay in South Texas to High Island east of Galveston toward the Louisiana line. The warning means the will see sustained wind of at least 74 mph.

Flooding from a storm surge 3 to 5 feet above normal tide levels also was likely in the warning area, along with 5 to 8 inches of rain.

Tropical storm-force wind extended outward up to 140 miles from the hurricane's center, and had started lashing parts of the Louisiana coast.

Galveston County emergency management officials had urged residents of the west end of the Bolivar Peninsula to consider leaving in anticipation of the storm, since tides above 4 feet would cut off evacuation routes.

"We are a little bit more under the gun," Galveston Mayor Roger Quiroga said.

"All the way from the Galveston-High Island area south, everybody is asking people in low lying areas to leave," said Rick Perry, Brazoria County's Emergency Management Coordinator.

Several state parks on the Texas Coast evacuated visitors on Monday and were likely to remain closed through at least Thursday.

Major oil companies had evacuated hundreds of workers from drilling and production platforms in the Gulf and shut down oil and gas production as the storm approached and gathered strength.

Only about half the usual number of crabbers at Seadrift, on Guadalupe Bay near the center of the warning area, were at work Monday despite pleasant conditions, said Josephine London, 50.

Claudette developed Tuesday in the Caribbean, brushing Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and Mexico's Yucatan peninsula before entering the Gulf of Mexico.

The last hurricane to strike Texas was in 1999, when Bret slammed into a largely unpopulated stretch between Corpus Christi and Brownsville.

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On the Net:

National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

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