Cristobal on track to stay east of Texas

Forecasters say Louisiana most likely to be hit by 3rd named storm of 2020 hurricane season

It appears Texas will be spared a direct hit from Tropical Storm Cristobal, the third named storm just one week into what’s forecast to be an above-normal hurricane season.

The center of Cristobal is expected to reach Louisiana and move inland late Sunday and Monday, with tropical stormforce winds likely arriving on Sunday morning ahead of the storm’s center. Heavy rains are possible in east Texas, prompting Gov. Greg Abbott and emergency management officials to unveil social distancing-compliant evacuation plans should they be needed.

“In typical Texas fashion, we are dealing with multiple challenges,” Abbott said. “This situation is different from other types of storms we’ve dealt with in the past.”

So far this year, two named storms — Tropical Storm Arthur and Tropical Storm Bertha — formed in May, and Cristobal became a tropical storm on Tuesday. It weakened to a tropical depression on Thursday but regained tropical storm strength on Friday. It’s expected to strengthen some more while moving north over the Gulf of Mexico and then start weakening once it moves inland, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center.

The months of June and July typically see one or two named storms, Gerry Bell, the lead hurricane season forecaster with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, said during a May news conference. These are typically weaker storms, though there might be a hurricane every several years.

He added that some weaker, short-lived storms that might have gone unrecorded 20 years ago are now being named due to better monitoring and a policy change in 2000 that began naming subtropical storms. Still, the bulk of hurricanes — especially the more intense hurricanes — tend to form in August, September and October.

“That’s the peak of the hurricane season,” Bell said. “But nonetheless, some of these shortlived storms, you need to be ready. A slow-moving tropical storm can produce 10 or 15 inches

of rain over a big area. That’d produce a lot of inland flooding.”

With the potential for heavy rainfall spanning from east Texas to Florida this weekend and into early next week, Abbott said people living within 50 miles of the Sabine River are most likely to be evacuated if flooding occurs. Local officials are planning to begin evacuations earlier than usual to guard against the spread of the new coronavirus.

State and local officials have also arranged for motel rooms to be available to evacuees so that families can stay together without potentially spreading COVID-19 to others, Abbott said. Any emergency shelters that open will accept fewer evacuees than normal for social distancing purposes.

“As local officials go about their task of responding to this tropical storm challenge, they need to be cognizant constantly of the possibility that this could stoke people coming together in ways that could transmit COVID-19,” Abbott said.

Capacity will also be limited on evacuation buses, which will be able to take about a third as many passengers as usual, said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Emergency Management Division. He advised residents to make sure they have enough personal protective equipment and hand sanitizer.

As of 4 p.m. Friday, the center of Tropical Storm Cristobal had left the Yucatán Peninsula and was over the southern Gulf of Mexico. The storm’s center was expected to move over the central Gulf of Mexico on Saturday and be near the northern Gulf of Mexico coast on Sunday.

Storm surge warnings and tropical storm warnings had been issued for parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center has forecast 13 to 19 named storms for this year’s hurricane season, which began June 1 and ends Nov. 30. Of these named storms, six to 10 could become hurricanes with winds of at least 74 mph, including three to six major hurricanes with winds of at least 111 mph, classifying them as Category 3, 4 or 5.

Jim Blackburn, co-director of the Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters Center at Rice University, said heat from the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean acts as fuel for hurricanes. So as climate change prompts increased temperatures for these bodies of water — plus a warmer atmosphere that can hold more moisture and create the potential for more rain — storms can become more severe than similar storms created 100 years ago. He hasn’t seen data to indicate that warmer water and atmosphere temperatures is causing more storms, but he said these can contribute to storms being more intense.

“You have more and more of the elements that contribute to big storms,” Blackburn said, “and that will continue to really get worse going into the mid-century because right now, at least, our temperature is continuing to climb.”