Tropical Storm Bertha Crawls Toward the Texas Coast

Tropical Storm Bertha has spent much of this week grinding through the northern Gulf. As of the National Hurricane Center's July 21 advisory the center sat about 70 miles southwest of Panama City, Florida, with maximum sustained winds near 60 mph and a slow north-northwest crawl of about 3 mph. Those figures are a snapshot and are expected to change. Forecasters see Bertha turning west and heading toward the Texas coast through the middle of the week, and the wind, rain, and surge numbers will travel with it.

Tropical storm warnings stretched from the Bay and Gulf county line in Florida to the Terrebonne and Lafourche parish line in Louisiana, with watches reaching toward metropolitan New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain. The forecast track then aims the heaviest weather at southeast Texas by Wednesday and Thursday, which is why the state is watching a storm that has not arrived yet.

With a slow tropical system, the wind is rarely the worst of it. The water is. The Hurricane Center called for 2 to 4 inches of rain with isolated amounts near 6, and 2 to 4 feet of storm surge near the mouth of the Mississippi, with both expected to rise as the track sharpens. Texas has a tender spot in the Hill Country, where the ground is still recovering from the deadly flash flooding earlier this month and saturated soil sends new rain straight into the creeks and low water crossings. The good news is that a storm this slow gives a prepared household time. Learning how to prepare for a hurricane before the sky changes is most of the work.

The steps that matter now are the ordinary ones. Know your evacuation zone, keep the fuel tank above half, and stage a bug out bag by the door so leaving takes five minutes instead of an hour. If the water starts to move, surviving a flood comes down to staying out of it, since most flood deaths happen in moving water and in vehicles. And because Bertha's rain and wind can pull utilities down for days, a few gallons of stored water per person turns a rough outage into a manageable one.

For now Bertha is still a tropical storm and still settling on a path, and the Hurricane Center has been honest that its final strength and landfall carry more uncertainty than usual. That is the argument for getting ready now instead of waiting for a clean forecast. The central Gulf and Texas will know much more within a day or two. Spend the quiet hours before then checking your own plan, because the calm ahead of a slow storm is the part you actually control. Be Prepared Not Scared.