HARLINGEN, Texas — Rescue workers were activated in southern Texas in preparation for heavy rain expected to accompany a tropical depression slowly churning its way through the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday.
The fifth depression of the Atlantic hurricane season formed late Tuesday and was expected to become a tropical storm before making landfall in Texas on Thursday morning, the National Weather Service said.
At 8 a.m. EDT, the depression was centered 275 miles east-southeast of Brownsville, Texas, and about 310 miles east of La Pesca, Mexico, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. It was moving to the west-northwest at around 13 mph.
Its maximum sustained wind speeds were near 30 mph, and forecasters said it was expected to strengthen. If its wind speeds reach the 39-mph threshold for a tropical storm, it would be named Erin.
For the last nine Januarys I've spent the first weekend of the year in Rockport participating in the Rockport Gospel Music Festival. The current track map for this storm has it coming ashore right around Rockport, so hopefully the thing won't become a full-fledged hurricane when it makes landfall. I'm planning to go back again in 2008.
I experienced a hurricane first hand in the same area in 1970. That story here.
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