Hurricane Warning Issued in Texas

The National Weather Service placed more than 200 miles of the Texas shoreline under a hurricane warning Monday as Hurricane Claudette lurched its way across the Gulf of Mexico, gathering strength and leaving ominous waterspouts spinning offshore.

Claudette will be the first hurricane to strike the United States this year, said Frank Lepore, a spokesman at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. A lumbering, mercurial storm that has shifted course several times, Claudette is expected to reach land this afternoon or evening near Port O’Connor, Texas, Lepore said. Monday night the storm was 115 miles southeast of Galveston, moving to the northwest at 7 mph.

A hurricane warning stretched from Baffin Bay, south of Corpus Christi, north to High Island, near the Louisiana border. Lepore said winds of about 58 mph should begin lashing the coast today by early afternoon. Hurricane-force winds of 80 mph will likely descend several hours later, he said, along with as much as 8 inches of rain and a storm surge of more than 3 feet above normal tide levels.

Claudette was met with a blend of apathy, anxiety and resignation. It was a beautiful day Monday in Port Lavaca, a neighboring city to Port O’Connor. Some fishermen went out in search of redfish and flounder, as usual, and many found it inconceivable that a blustery hurricane was lingering offshore.

“Every year it’s like this,” said Jennifer Yi, manager of the Chaparral Motel. “They say a storm is coming and then it doesn’t happen. It’s so pretty outside, sunny and no wind or rain. It’s hard to believe a storm is really coming.”

Still, campers and other tourists from South Padre Island, near the Mexican border, to Galveston, southeast of Houston, canceled reservations and left coastal areas voluntarily.

Natural gas and oil companies evacuated workers and shut down floating platforms and other operations.

Volunteers and government officials dumped piles of sand to guard against large waves and tidal surges in the tiny seaside towns that dot the Gulf Coast, and residents boarded up windows and stocked up on provisions.

In Corpus Christi, a manager at one lumber and home improvement store said she’d been so busy selling plywood, flashlights and batteries that she hadn’t had time to prepare herself.

“A bunch of people are coming in. It started Sunday and they’re still coming in,” said Nancy Buendel, lawn and garden manager at Sutherland’s. “People just want to be prepared. Why risk it?”

At the Cast ‘N’ Stay fishing lodge at Baffin Bay, owner Mickey Riley said he expects the bulk of the storm to pass to the north.

Still, many homeowners began folding up and packing away small piers that are built in sections, and workers were stowing away or tying down anything that could become a missile in high winds -- tables, chairs, barbecues. Most visitors were leaving, Riley said.

“We’re keeping an eye on it,” he said. “If it keeps going up north we’ll be OK. We’ll have some tidal surge, some high tide, some rain -- that’s about it. It happens around here. We get pretty used to it.”

Closer to the Mexican border, where Claudette was headed before turning north early Monday, tourism officials were trying to repair the damage of a storm that never came.

“We have lost some business because of this,” said Dan Quandt, executive director of the South Padre Island Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We’re relieved that we’re out of danger. And now the key is to make sure that people know South Padre Island is totally open for business.”

And farther inland, in the Rio Grande Valley, officials were lamenting that the nasty weather no longer appeared imminent. Southwest Texas is in the grips of a debilitating drought, one that some analysts believe has lasted for a decade. At one point this spring, portions of the mighty Rio Grande were reduced to a trickle.

“It’s been four months since the last heavy rain,” said Irene Casares, a water section manager with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in Harlingen, near the Mexican border. “We definitely could have used the water.”

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Times researcher Lianne Hart contributed to this report.