Mexico, Texas Brace for Hurricane Emily

Gathering strength over the Gulf of Mexico with 90 mph winds Tuesday morning, Hurricane Emily was on a path to hit northeastern Mexico and south Texas.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Emily was a Category 1 storm, but could easily rebuild to a dangerous Category 3 over the gulf’s warm waters before making landfall early Wednesday.

At 5 a.m. CDT, Emily’s center was near latitude 23.5 north and longitude 93.5 west, about 275 miles east of La Pesca, Mexico, and 300 miles east-southeast of Brownsville, Texas. The storm was moving west-northwest at nearly 15 mph.

Late Monday, Mexico posted a hurricane warning along the thinly populated coast of Tamaulipas state, while U.S. officials posted a hurricane warning for the lower Texas coast from Port Mansfield to the Mexican border.

Emily began July 10 as a tropical depression in the Atlantic Ocean, and grew to hurricane force, battering Grenada, Jamaica and the Yucatan Peninsula.