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Storm Watchers Surprised By Humberto's Rise

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By JUAN A. LOZANO and MATT SEDENSKY, The Associated Press

Published: September 14, 2007

HIGH ISLAND, Texas - Call it the instant hurricane.

Humberto, which grew faster than any storm on record from tropical depression to full-scale hurricane landfall, surprised the Texas-Louisiana coast early Thursday with 85-mph winds and heavy rain that knocked out power to more than 100,000 and left at least one person dead.

Meteorologists were at a loss to explain the rapid, 16-hour genesis of the first hurricane to hit the United States since 2005.

'Before Humberto developed, you looked at the satellite imagery the day before and there was virtually nothing there. This really spun up out of thin air very, very quickly,' said National Hurricane Center specialist James Franklin. 'We've never had any tropical cyclone go from where Humberto was to where Humberto got.'

Surprising as Humberto was, forecasters said it might have been a blessing that it didn't linger longer over the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico, which could have given it time to develop into more than a minimal hurricane.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Ingrid became the ninth storm of the Atlantic hurricane season Thursday when it formed in the open ocean, the National Hurricane Center said.

At 11 p.m., Ingrid's center was about 840 miles east of the Lesser Antilles and heading toward the west-northwest near 6 mph and was expected to continue at that pace for the 24 hours.
Maximum sustained winds were near 40 mph, with higher gusts. Tropical storm winds extended outward up to 50 miles from the center.

With Humberto, Texas coastal residents prepared for a tropical storm that quickly would flood ground saturated by the wettest summer in 60 years. Although forecasts called for up to a foot of rain, Humberto produced no more than half that and generated much more wind. By late afternoon, it had weakened to a tropical depression and was churning across the South.

'We feel very fortunate and blessed it wasn't worse,' said Beaumont resident Edward Petty, 50, who was clearing debris outside his home 50 miles northeast of High Island, near where the storm came ashore.

'It was amazing to go to sleep to a tropical storm and wake up to a hurricane,' he said. 'What are you going to do? You couldn't get up and drive away. You couldn't run for it. You just have to hunker down.'

Only three other storms have pulled off a similar feat, growing from depression to hurricane in 18 hours - Blanche in 1969, Harvey in 1981 and Alberto in 1982 - but all of them were at sea at the time, not about to crash ashore like Humberto.

Experts can't draw conclusions on possible trends of faster-forming hurricanes based on just one storm. Franklin said part of the problem was Humberto was a relatively small storm, making it harder for forecasters and computer models to analyze.

One possibility, he said, is that because Humberto was close to landfall, greater friction between air currents and the ground could have forced winds upward and helped it intensify.

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