October 2, 1995
Web posted at: 10:10 p.m. EDT (0210 GMT)
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Opal became the ninth hurricane of the season Monday, gaining strength after crossing over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The slow-moving storm is chugging toward the U.S. Gulf Coast, but forecasters are uncertain where or when landfall might occur.
Forecasters are watching the storm closely, and may issue a hurricane watch Monday night or Tuesday for parts of the Gulf coast from Louisiana to northwest Florida.
At 8 p.m. EDT, the National Hurricane Center in Miami reported Opal was about 550 miles south-soutwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River, moving northward at about 7 miles per hour. It had sustained winds near 80 miles-an-hour, making it a minimal hurricane, but additional strengthening was expected Monday night and Tuesday.
Satellite image of Hurricane Opal - 298K QT movie
Tropical storm warnings were in effect Monday for coastal areas of southeastern Mexico from Progreso to Veracruz, where forecasters expected Opal to dump 10 inches of rain before moving on. Heavy rain has already fallen on coastal areas, flooding Mexico's eastern states and closing fishing and commercial ports.
As rivers swelled, more than 20,000 people in Campeche state were forced to abandon their homes over the weekend, the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada reported. Some 400 communities in the gulf state of Tabasco were flooded, sending 22,000 residents to government shelters.
Opal's slow drift made it difficult for forecasters to predict where and when it might make landfall. It is not clear, they said, what effect several troughs of low pressure moving across the United States will have on the storm. As a precaution Sunday, U.S. oil and natural gas producers in the Gulf of Mexico evacuated non-essential personnel.
Over the weekend, storm experts said Louisiana was one possible target, setting officials into action in the state's only inhabited barrier island, Grand Isle, which has a population of 1,440. "We're quite sure that Opal will deliver us a soft kiss on our shoreline sometime Tuesday," Mayor Andy Valence said Sunday. But the slowing of Opal made it more likely that encounter would happen Wednesday, according to hurricane forecaster Mike Hopkins.
Grand Isle was pounded by a hurricane in early October 1893, when 1,500 people were washed to sea and drowned, Valance said. Although no hurricane deaths have occurred there since that time, residents are wary.
Valence said hundreds left the island over the weekend because rising tides threatened to close the only highway connecting it with the mainland. "We're very vulnerable and sensitive to flooding," Valence told CNN. "With Hurricane Juan, as well as with Andrew, it was devastating as far as the flood damage was concerned." Women, children and the disabled have been asked to leave first, but the mayor said he expected to stay and ride out Opal. "I will always be the last to leave," he said. "If (evacuation is) not 100 percent, then I will stay."
Hopkins said Grand Isle is not the only community that should get ready. "Pretty much anybody in the Gulf Coast states has got to pay attention to what's going to happen," he said.
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