Quick-forming Hurricane Humberto dumps heavy rain in Texas, Louisiana as it weakens

Humberto, the first hurricane to hit the U.S. in two years, sneaked up on south Texas and Louisiana overnight and crashed ashore Thursday with heavy rains and 80 mph winds, killing at least one person.\nThe system rapidly became a Category 1 hurricane, then weakened to a tropical storm by midmorning as it bored 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.\nHumberto wasn’t even a tropical storm until Wednesday afternoon, strengthening from a tropical depression with 35 mph winds to a hurricane with 85 mph winds in just 18 hours, senior hurricane specialist James Franklin said at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.\n“To put this development in perspective – no tropical cyclone in the historical record has ever reached this intensity at a faster rate near landfall. It would be nice to know, someday, why this happened,” Franklin said.\nEdward Petty, 50, was clearing debris in front of his Beaumont home and said he was surprised by the quick turn.\n“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.”\nHumberto made landfall less than 50 miles from where Hurricane Rita did in 2005, and areas of southwest Louisiana not fully recovered from Rita were bracing for more misery.