New Orleans – A strengthened Tropical Storm Cindy moved its way toward the Gulf Coast on Tuesday with nearly 60-mph winds and the potential for 10 inches of rain, forcing tourists and residents to head inland and oil companies to evacuate rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
Meanwhile, a second tropical storm, Dennis, developed in the Caribbean, and forecasters warned it could hit Florida later in the week.
Forecasters said Cindy could strengthen even more before its center reaches the Gulf Coast late Tuesday or early today, but it was not expected to become a hurricane, the National Hurricane Center said.
Forecast tracks showed it crossing the southeasternmost tip of Louisiana, where the state protrudes into the Gulf of Mexico, and then moving onshore near the Louisiana-Mississippi state line.
A tropical-storm warning was posted from Morgan City, La., to the Florida Panhandle town of Destin, and bands of rain from the storm hit the coast Tuesday morning.
Some of it was heavy, and there were scattered reports of street flooding in Jefferson Parish, a New Orleans suburb.
On Louisiana’s tiny barrier island town of Grand Isle, officials ordered recreational vehicles to leave so that Louisiana Highway 1, the only route off the island, would not be clogged with slow-moving traffic should a full-scale evacuation be necessary.
“We have just a small timetable here to work,” said Grand Isle town clerk Ray Santiny. “It would be horrendous with all these campers on the highway to get our people out.”
Officials of Louisiana’s coastal Lafourche and Plaquemines parishes called for voluntary evacuations of people living outside of storm-protection levees.
In Mississippi’s coastal Hancock County, jail inmates filled sandbags for distribution to flood-prone areas, said Dee Lumpkin of the county’s Emergency Operations Center.
“The latest advisory indicates we can expect from 4 to 10 inches of rain,” Lumpkin said.
A survey of oil companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico found that 23 petroleum- production platforms and six drilling rigs had been evacuated, interrupting more than 3 percent of the gulf’s normal oil and natural-gas production.
Dennis was centered about 325 miles south-southwest of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and moving west-northwest at about 20 mph.
It was on track to reach Haiti today and South Florida on Friday, said hurricane-center meteorologist Trisha Wallace.
