Texas Prepares for Date With Claudette

A hurricane watch was posted Sunday along the South Texas coast as Tropical Storm Claudette crawled across the Gulf of Mexico. Campers packed up and left low-lying South Padre Island and the Coast Guard helped rescue swimmers caught in strong currents.

The projected path would bring the storm across Padre Island with landfall Tuesday afternoon north of Brownsville, said Jim Campbell, a forecaster in the National Weather Service office in Brownsville.

A hurricane watch was in effect along the Texas Gulf Coast from Port O’Connor, about 70 miles northeast of Corpus Christi, to Brownsville and south along the Mexican coast to Rio San Fernando.

By 11 p.m. EDT, the center of Claudette was about 320 miles east of Brownsville, with maximum sustained winds blowing at 65 mph, 9 mph shy of hurricane strength. Slow strengthening is expected over the next 24 hours.

The National Weather Service said swells were approaching the Texas coast and could create dangerous surf conditions.

“The circulation is strengthening,” meteorologist Jesse Haro said at the National Weather Service in Brownsville. “That doesn’t mean it’s going to move any faster toward us, it simply means that it’s becoming a stronger storm.”

Petty Officer 3rd Class Andrew Kendrick said the Coast Guard helped search for 10 to 12 people, including an 8-year-old girl on a boogie board swept more than a mile down the South Padre Island beach. Everyone was accounted for. Kendrick said beaches on South Padre were closed.

Owners of about 900 recreational vehicles parked for the summer on South Padre Island were warned that winds of more than 25 mph would mean they would not be allowed to drive their rigs across the only bridge to the mainland. By Sunday, most of the campers had packed up voluntarily and left.

Workers on South Padre, along the coast a few miles from Brownsville, piled sand into berms at beach accesses, and an official said the resort community was bracing for high water. There were no plans yet to evacuate.

Experts have predicted a busy hurricane season, which began June 1 and ends Nov. 30.