NHC Issues Tropical Storm Warning for Parts of Texas, Mexico

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) has issued some of its first storm warnings for the 2024 hurricane season.

The NHC this week is tracking two storm systems, one of which it is expecting to become a Tropical Storm later this week, which it’s currently calling a “potential tropical cyclone,” and another that it’s calling a “potential tropical cyclone.” Both storms are moving towards the Atlantic coast of North America.

The first storm, the potential tropical cyclone, is currently the more significant of the two and could bring coastal flooding to the Texas Coast beginning as early as Tuesday morning, and Tropical Storm conditions starting Wednesday over the southern Texas coast. The storm could make landfall on the coast on Wednesday night into Thursday morning.

The NHC has already issued a few warnings for the storm, including a Tropical Strom Warning for the area starting at Port O’Connor south to the Rio Grande and a Tropical Storm Watch for the northeastern coast of Mexico, from the Rio Grande to Puerto de Altamira.

Those warnings, if they hold, would mean the storm would miss hitting Texas’ major hubs, including Dallas and Houston, head-on, but could bring rain of up to 15 inches to Northeast Mexico and South Texas. It could also bring some rising water (between two and four feet) to Galveston Bay, which could impact some cruise ships.

The other storm system, rolling through the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, has a high chance of forming a Tropical Cyclone today, the NHC said, though questions remain as to whether or not it will impact land. The storm is currently “several hundred miles east of the Bahamas” and on track to approach the coast of the Southeastern U.S. on Friday.

Still, a lot is unknown about the potential of the second system. The NHC expects to issue more details about it as it moves through the Caribbean Sea over the next few days.