Miami, Jun 22 (EFE).- Cindy, the third tropical storm of the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, made landfall early Thursday on the border between Louisiana and Texas, bringing intense rain and flooding.
In its latest public advisory at 1200 GMT, the United States’ National Hurricane Center said the center of Cindy was located 65 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and was packing maximum sustained winds of 65 kilometers per hour.
The storm is moving toward the north at 19 kilometers per hour and is expected to turn toward the north-northeast later Thursday, followed by a turn toward the northeast on Friday.
Based on that forecast, Cindy will move into southeastern Arkansas early Friday and then into Tennessee later that day.
The Miami-based NHC said Cindy would weaken to a tropical depression later Thursday morning and become a low-pressure remnant on Thursday night.
Cindy is expected to produce between seven and 15 centimeters (three to six inches) of rainfall in eastern Texas, western and central Louisiana and southern and eastern Arkansas through Friday morning, the center said.
Lower amounts of rainfall are expected in southern Mississippi, southern and central Alabama and the extreme-western Florida Panhandle in that same timeframe.
“This rainfall could cause life-threatening flash flooding in these areas,” the NHC said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in a May 25 report that it expected 11 to 17 tropical storms to form during the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, with between five and nine of the systems becoming hurricanes, and two to four of the hurricanes reaching a high category on the Saffir-Simpson scale of strength.
The first tropical storm of the 2017 season was Arlene, which formed in the mid-Atlantic in April, more than a month before the official start of the season on June 1.
Tropical Storm Bret formed on Monday near the coast of South America but fizzled out the next day near Trinidad.