Tropical Storm Alberto Brings Floods to Texas as Mexico Braces for Landfall

Tropical Storm Alberto, the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, brought intense rain and coastal flooding to parts of Texas and northeastern Mexico on Wednesday, hours before it was expected to make landfall.

Officials in Mexico were monitoring the levels of dams, rivers and streams and were also cleaning drainage points to prevent potential flooding.

In Texas, officials warned of flooded roads in the Houston area early Wednesday afternoon. The tide was rushing beneath the elevated houses in some coastal cities, such as Surfside Beach, about 40 miles south of Galveston, by Wednesday morning. The city closed its beach earlier this week and warned visitors to stay away as the flooding worsened.

The National Hurricane Center warned that Alberto was a large storm, with tropical-force winds extending about 415 miles north of its center in the Gulf of Mexico as it moved west toward northeastern Mexico. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 40 miles per hour, but the main concern was rainfall of a foot or more that was predicted for parts of Texas and Mexico. Tropical storm warnings were issued for coastal areas on both sides of the border.

Forecasters predicted that Alberto could make landfall early Thursday near the Mexican city of Tampico, but its effects were expected to extend far beyond that.

Mayor Gregg Bisso of Surfside Beach said that while the flooding was slowly easing there on Wednesday evening, the city was bracing for things to intensify at any moment, as they did when Hurricane Nicholas slammed into the city in 2021, causing major damage.