Tropical Storm Erin plows toward South Texas coast

South Texas braced Wednesday for Tropical Storm Erin to bring torrential downpours to a state that already has had one of its rainiest summers on record.

Shell Oil Co. evacuated 188 people from facilities out in the Gulf of Mexico that are in the storm’s path.

Erin formed late Tuesday as the fifth depression of the Atlantic hurricane season and was upgraded to a tropical storm Wednesday when its maximum sustained wind speed hit 40 mph, the National Hurricane Center said. The threshold for tropical storm status is 39 mph.

Erin’s center was expected to be near the Texas coast this morning, forecasters said.

A tropical storm warning was posted from San Luis Pass, about 50 miles south of Houston, southwest to Mexico.

The storm was probably too close to land to gain enough wind speed to become a hurricane, with sustained wind of at least 74 mph, said National Weather Service forecaster Tony Abbott in Brownsville.

But the center said late Wednesday it could strengthen slightly before landfall.

Meanwhile, a hurricane watch was issued late Wednesday for a portion of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean as Tropical Storm Dean gained strength, forecasters said.

The watch, in effect for St. Lucia, Martinique, Guadeloupe Saba and St. Eustatius, was issued by local governments.

A hurricane watch means hurricane conditions are possible in the next 36 hours.

Dean was expected to become a hurricane sometime today, forecasters said.

In the Pacific, Flossie was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm after sideswiping Hawaii’s Big Island with rain and moderate winds.

It was a close call: Flossie approached the biggest and southernmost of the Hawaiian Islands with winds as strong as 140 mph earlier in the week, making it a Category 4 storm.

If it had made landfall, the powerful hurricane would have been the first to hit the isles since Iniki slammed Kauai in 1992, killing six people.