Hermine's speed helped minimize impact

Tropical Storm Hermine sped through the Rio Grande Valley overnight Monday, its fast trajectory sparing most of the area from the heavy rainfall forecasters had anticipated.

“We were expecting 4 to 8 inches (of rain) originally, but the storm did pick up speed throughout the day,” National Weather Service meteorologist Jason Straub said. “Since it picked up some speed, it had much less time to rain on those areas in the Valley,” he said.

While meteorologists did not anticipate any major flooding, cities in the eastern Valley reported high winds throughout the night that uprooted trees, tore at roofs and ripped carport awnings.

The Harlingen area saw the highest winds throughout the storm, Straub reported, with sustained winds at 59 mph and gusts as high as 72 mph. In Brownsville, sustained winds hit 48 mph and gusts were as high as 69 mph, he said, while Bayview re-corded 47 mph sustained winds and 59 mph gusts.

Straub reported that two cities near the coast, Port Isabel and Brownsville, recorded the highest rainfall amounts with 3.03 inches in Port Isabel and 2.96 inches in Brownsville. Harlingen followed with 2.44 inches of rain and Raymondville with 2.31 inches, while in Hidalgo County, McAllen recorded a mere 0.17 inches, Straub said.

At least 15,300 Harlingen residents lost electric service early Tuesday at the storm’s peak, according to AEP Texas staff.

As of 9 p.m. Tuesday, AEP reported there were still 4,595 customers without power in the Harlingen area and over 1,600 without power in the San Benito area. At that time there were still 1,900 without power in the Port Isabel area, AEP reported.

AEP estimated that power may not be fully restored in some areas until late tonight.

Olga Maldonado, regional external affairs director for AEP Texas, said problems with sections of power lines seemed to be the cause of the outages.

She said those problems could be caused by fallen trees limbs, lines slapping together or fuse problems.

She also said as of 9:46 a.m. 22,889 Valley customers were without power, with 12,470 of them in the Harlingen, Raymond-ville and San Benito area.

She added that 11 crews were brought to the Valley from out of town to restore power and tree crews were also brought here to remove debris.

“We appreciate (customers’) patience,” Maldonado said. “What we do is prioritize outages. We sectionialize to see which outage we can pick up quicker to help the largest bulk of customers.”

Frank Espinosa, AEP’s Harlingen-area communications staffer, said he did not know the exact number of customers who lost power but Harlingen, San Benito and Raymondville were “by far” affected the most.

Magic Valley Electric communications coordinator Danella Hughes said about 700 of the co-op’s customers lost power in Cameron County during the morning and nine power poles were down. Repairs were taking place in the Raymondville and San Benito areas.

She also said about 1,200 customers were without power all over Cameron County as a result of pole damage.

Forecasters had expected the storm to soak Hidalgo County, hitting low-lying areas in the Mid Valley with heavy rainfall. Al-though western Hidalgo County was inundated by flooding from Hurricane Alex in late June, Straub said Hermine largely left those areas untouched with only small amounts of rainfall, making flooding unlikely.

“It doesn’t look like that’s going to be a major concern,” he said. “Most of the rainfall came right near the coast, so that’s all pretty much going to flow right back into the Gulf.”

Officials in Combes were out Tuesday assessing damage from the storm, the city’s public works director Noe Alaniz said. High winds from Hermine tore shingles from the roof of some homes and damaged at least six car ports, Alaniz said.

“We know the wind was bad. We saw several trees uprooted,” he said. “Basically, right now we’re dealing with wind damage, no real flooding.”

More water, although a lesser amount, will be released from Falcon Dam into the Rio Grande waterway, Sally Spener the International Boundary and Water Commission spokeswoman, said from the agency’s El Paso office.

Tuesday’s water release was a fraction of the individual releases that followed Hurricane Alex and other storms in June and July that that flooded much of the Texas-Mexico border region, she said.

“We don’t anticipate significant releases,” Spener said.

Valley Morning Star reporters Jacqueline Armendariz and Fernando del Valle contributed to this report.