In the Gulf of Mexico, Tropical depression Five formed last night, and then was upgraded to Tropical Storm Erin on Wednesday. The storm is moving northwest toward the southeastern Texas Coast.
Conditions appear favorable for Tropical Storm Erin to be a flooding rain threat into Saturday morning.
The current forecast track brings Erin to the southern Texas Coast on Thursday, but the impacts will be felt along all of the Texas Coast, from Brownsville, through Corpus Christi and Houston, to Lake Charles, LA in the form of squally rain.
On Friday the storm will slowly spin into south central Texas bringing a swath of potentially heavy rain with a risk for flooding and flash flooding in an area very wet from summer storms.
The rain will also swell streams and rivers like the Nueces River (northwest of Corpus Christi) and Guadalupe River Near Bloomington (near Victoria)back into moderate to major flood stages into the weekend. Extreme caution is advised if you live or travel near these rivers.
Through Thursday evening heavy showers and thunderstorms will bring heavy rainfall of 3 to 5 inches over South Texas, including areas from Brownsville to Corpus Christi, with as much as 2 to 4 inches from Houston to Lake Charles. Some localized areas could experience 8 inches of rain or more by Saturday.
Gusty winds will also be on the increase, along with rough surf, especially along the southern Texas Coast. That being said, wind impacts will likely be far less compared to the heavy rain impact.
Meanwhile, our second area of concern, Tropical Storm Dean (65 mph), continues to move quickly west in the Atlantic.
Dean is now steadily intensifying and is forecast to become a hurricane by Thursday night or early Friday, and should be threatening the Lesser Antilles as early as Friday. A hurricane watch may be posted tonight or early Thursday morning for the the Lesser Antilles. From there, Dean should continue westward into the Caribbean and has the potential to continue to increase in strength and threaten Hispaniola to Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.
It is too early to tell what, if any, impacts Dean will have on the United States but all along the East to Gulf Coast will want to keep monitoring Dean through the weekend into next week.
Flossie has been downgraded to a tropical storm as it moves underneath the Hawaiian Island Chain and is forecast to slowly weaken in intensity. So far it has been mainly high surf and some locally heav rain near South Point that impacted Hawaii, and mainly on the Big Island. Good news for at one point Flossie was a major hurricane category 4 that quickly weakened to a tropical storm when it approached weakened to a tropical storm when it approached the Big Island.
The weather will improve nicely so don't worry if you vacation plans take you to the Land of Paradise the next few days.
In the western Pacific all eyes are watching Super Typhoon Sepat east of the northern Philippines. It is forecast to bring heavy flooding rain to the northern end of Luzon with very high dangerous surf and then head toward the island nation of Taiwan as a major Typhoon with damaging wind and flooding rain a real threat in a few days. The track then takes it into eastern China with a concern for more flooding
