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Fickle Humberto hits Texas as hurricane

The storm revs up overnight, leaving 1 dead and 100,000 powerless.

HOUSTON - Texans went to bed Wednesday night expecting to be struck by a tropical storm. They awoke to find they had been hit by a hurricane instead.

The stunningly fast buildup of what became Hurricane Humberto shocked scientists, some of whom said there was nothing like it in the historical record.

In 18 hours, Humberto strengthened from a tropical depression with 35 mph winds to a Category 1 hurricane with 85-mph winds before crashing ashore. It did not grow into a hurricane until after midnight.

"It's very, very rare to see a storm go from a depression to a hurricane in this short a time," said James Franklin, a senior specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Humberto then weakened to a tropical storm by midmorning and bore into central Louisiana. Roads were flooded and power was knocked out, but the greatest concern was heavy rain falling in areas already inundated by a wet summer.

In Texas, Humberto came ashore near the cities of Beaumont and Port Arthur about 2 a.m. Thursday, according to the National Hurricane Center. The compact storm drenched an already soaked region, shut down three oil refineries, knocked out power to about 100,000 people and killed an 80-year-old man.

"It was amazing to go to sleep to a tropical storm and wake up to a hurricane," Edward Petty, 50, said as he cleared debris Thursday in front of his Beaumont home. "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."

Forecasters initially predicted that Humberto would hit farther to the west, near the barrier island city of Galveston. Franklin said that the storm's more easterly course caused it to stay in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico a little longer, where it picked up intensity.

"This took everyone by surprise. This just wasn't forecast to be this bad," said Sgt. Ken Carona of the Port Arthur Police Department. "We did not expect hurricane-strength winds at all."

Humberto, which struck about 50 miles from the spot where Hurricane Rita went ashore two years ago, quickly moved east into Louisiana and was expected to drop up to 8 inches of rain before it passed, which led local and state officials to worry that the region, still recovering from Rita, would suffer serious flood damage. Mississippi and Alabama also were expected to receive heavy rains.

The highest rainfall in Texas was on the Bolivar Peninsula of Galveston Island, which got 6 1/2 inches of rain, the National Weather Service said.

In Louisiana, Gov. Kathleen Blanco declared a state of emergency, and southern parishes had shelters on standby with sandbags available.

Humberto is the first hurricane to hit the United States since Category 3 Wilma ripped through the Miami area in October 2005. The damage it inflicted made Wilma the third-most expensive U.S. hurricane after Katrina and Andrew.

Another tropical depression was far in the open Atlantic on Thursday, about 895 miles east of the Lesser Antilles. It had maximum sustained winds near 35 mph, and forecasters said it could grow into a tropical storm in the next day.

[Last modified September 13, 2007, 23:50:30]