christiangrl777
September 13th, 2007, 12:30 PM
HOUSTON — Humberto, the first hurricane to hit the U.S. Gulf Coast in two years, sneaked up on south Texas and Louisiana overnight and crashed ashore Thursday with heavy rains and 80-mph winds, killing at least one person.
The system weakened to a tropical storm by midmorning and bore into central Louisiana. The greatest concern for many Texas residents was the heavy rain falling in areas already inundated by a wet summer.
Humberto made landfall less than 50 miles from where Hurricane Rita did in 2005, and areas of southwest Louisiana not fully recovered from Rita were bracing for more misery.
"I'm in a FEMA trailer (because of Rita) and I'm on oxygen," said Albertha Garrett, 70, who spent the night at a shelter in the Lake Charles Civic Center. "I had to come to the civic center just in case the lights would go out, because I'm alone and I'm handicapped."
Humberto strengthened from a tropical depression with 35 mph winds to a hurricane with 85 mph winds in just 18 hours, senior hurricane specialist James Franklin said at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
"To put this development in perspective — no tropical cyclone in the historical record has ever reached this intensity at a faster rate near landfall. It would be nice to know, someday, why this happened," Franklin said.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296555,00.html?sPage=fnc.specialsections/naturaldisaster
The system weakened to a tropical storm by midmorning and bore into central Louisiana. The greatest concern for many Texas residents was the heavy rain falling in areas already inundated by a wet summer.
Humberto made landfall less than 50 miles from where Hurricane Rita did in 2005, and areas of southwest Louisiana not fully recovered from Rita were bracing for more misery.
"I'm in a FEMA trailer (because of Rita) and I'm on oxygen," said Albertha Garrett, 70, who spent the night at a shelter in the Lake Charles Civic Center. "I had to come to the civic center just in case the lights would go out, because I'm alone and I'm handicapped."
Humberto strengthened from a tropical depression with 35 mph winds to a hurricane with 85 mph winds in just 18 hours, senior hurricane specialist James Franklin said at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
"To put this development in perspective — no tropical cyclone in the historical record has ever reached this intensity at a faster rate near landfall. It would be nice to know, someday, why this happened," Franklin said.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296555,00.html?sPage=fnc.specialsections/naturaldisaster