Hurricane Gustav makes landfall

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Right on schedule and exactly where it was forecast to go, Hurricane Gustav made landfall southeast of Morgan City, LA between 9:30-10:00 AM Monday morning. The official landfall location is Cocodrie, which is in an unincorporated part of Terrebonne Parish.

Gustav was a little weaker than forecast with 110 mph winds. That makes this a category two hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Intensity Scale which ranks storms 1-5 based on wind speed.  A category three hurricane has winds 111-130 mph.

As I mentioned during our late news on Sunday night, there was some dry air surrounding the south and west side of Gustav. During the overnight hours that drier air got pulled into the circulation, the storm weakened somewhat and winds dropped about 5 mph...just enough to change the category ranking. Although the damage potential is nearly the same.

The remnant moisture from Gustav will settle into east Texas and western Louisiana for a couple of days, but it probably won't linger past Wednesday. We could still have some heavy squalls here in the Houston area on Tuesday and Wednesday.

We should start to dry out on Thursday. The lower dew points will allow overnight lows to drop a few degrees but we'll quickly heat up during the afternoon hours.