Hurricane Bret is the strongest storm to traverse the Gulf of Mexico since Opal in 1995. Bret has gone from a category 1 hurricane at noon on Saturday to a category 4 hurricane 12 hours later. It is expected to bring winds in excess of 170 mph to parts of the Texas Coast Sunday.
Hurricane warnings have been extended northward along the Texas Coast in anticipation of dangerous Hurricane Bret. The category four storm is expected to make landfall late Sunday around Corpus Christi, Texas bringing life threatening weather conditions. Residents from Galveston to Brownsville are being evacuated as soon as possible while residents as far north as Houston are asked to remain alert as this situation develops.
Much farther east, T.S. Cindy has strengthened to the second hurricane of the 1999 season and a new cluster of thunderstorms north of the Leeward Island continues to become better organized. This cluster could become the next tropical depression in the Atlantic Basin. In the Pacific Ocean T.S. Fernanda is being watched as it approaches the west coast.
Update: 4:00PM CST
Driving rain squalls with winds up to 40 mph have already swept ashore along the Texas coast between Corpus Christi and Brownsville as Hurricane Bret aims a devastating blow at south Texas. Maximum sustained winds are still 140 mph in the eyewall of Bret, but fortunately the storm is fairly compact (relatively small in diameter).
For instance, a buoy just 30 miles from the center of the hurricane was reporting gusts to "just" 70 mph at 11 a.m. CDT. Where the eyewall does strike, however, damage will be extreme with storm surges running 10 to 15 feet above normal tides, perhaps as much as 20 feet at the heads of bays. Other dangers near the landfalling Bret include isolated tornadoes and excessive amounts of rain. Huge amounts of precipitation are possible even over inland areas of southern Texas as the storm weakens and drifts slowly westward tomorrow and Tuesday.
Dallas-Ft. Worth might welcome some of that rain--emphasis on some--as it continues to endure the longest summer rainless spell on record (as measured at the airport), now 42 consecutive days. The two longest spells on record are each 58 days, in 1950 and 1934. The 1950 rainless period ran from November into December, while the 1934 dry spell began in May and ended in July. The current rainless stretch surpassed the previous summer runs of 41 days in 1929 and 1913. There is a slight chance of scattered showers around Dallas tomorrow and Tuesday.
Mitch Battros
Producer - Earth Changes
http://www.earthchangesTV.com