Hurricane Dolly began hammering Texas' southernmost tip this morning, lashing buildings with violent winds, triggering tornado warnings and leading officials to fear massive flooding and failed levees along the Rio Grande.
The first Atlantic hurricane to strike the United States this year, Dolly was slowing to a jog just off the coast near Brownsville on the Texas-Mexico border around noon local time as a Category 2 hurricane, with winds topping 100 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
There were no immediate reports of deaths or serious injuries, but South Texas was rife with reports of flash-flooded roads, downed power lines and damaged buildings.
Emergency officials were confident that the Rio Grande Valley would withstand Dolly's gusts, which were expected to top 120 mph. But they were concerned that the predicted drumbeat of drenching rains -- six to 10 inches in most areas and as much as 15 in pockets -- would trigger widespread flooding in a South Texas border region where the population has grown dramatically in recent decades. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated this week that roughly 1.5 million people live in Dolly's projected path.
"I think the worst is yet to come," said Carlos Cascos, the county judge for coastal Cameron County, which includes Brownsville. In preparation, emergency officials in Cameron and adjacent Hidalgo County helped residents fill thousands of sandbags -- more than 40,000 in the town of Weslaco, pop. 27,000.
The area was flooded in 1967, when Hurricane Beulah came up the mouth of the Rio Grande between Brownsville and the Mexican city of Matamoros, spawning 115 twisters across Texas, killing 58 people and causing more than $1.2 billion in damage.
Beulah was a much stronger storm, briefly reaching Category 5 intensity, but flood control officials nonetheless worry about a similar outcome with Dolly, noting that that Rio Grande levees have been deteriorating for decades and may not hold.
Weather officials had predicted that the storm would slowly move westward along the Rio Grande, dumping massive amounts of water for days. However, Dolly appeared to be shifting to a more northwestern course, making the flooding impact more difficult to predict.
"The rainfall rates could be even higher than 15 inches, so flooding is the main concern," said JJ Brost, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service's southern region headquarters in Fort Worth. "But now that this has become a Category 2 hurricane, you certainly have the potential for damage to homes. Anything not tied down is going to become a projectile."
