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With Hurricane Marco on his way out and Hurricane Laura on her way to Texas, Austin first responders will likely see some action along the coastal communities threatened by the storm—but residents here in Central Texas won't see much rain, forecasters told Austonia on Tuesday.
"It's actually going to have little to no impact on our weather here in Central Texas," said Aaron Treadway, meteorologist for the National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio. "We may see some scattered thunderstorms with the outer rain bands tomorrow into Thursday, but we're only calling for a 20-30% chance of rain."
Winds are not expected to increase here at all, he said, meaning that the humidity and heat index is likely to stay the same throughout the week.
Laura was upgraded to a hurricane on Tuesday morning, with winds up to 75 mph, and expected to make landfall Wednesday along the Gulf Coast near the border of Texas and Louisiana. Before hitting landfall, Hurricane Laura is predicted to Category 3 hurricane or stronger, according to the Weather Channel.
On Tuesday, the City of Austin, Travis County, Hays County and Williamson County activated the Capital Area Shelter Hub Plan— last activated in response to Hurricane Harvey—at the state's request to prepare to receive evacuees from coastal communities.
Several evacuation centers will open today, including one in Austin at The Circuit of the Americas at 4 p.m.
The plan has been in place for several years and is activated by major disasters and other events requiring mass sheltering.
The Austin Fire Department and Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services have deployed resources ready to help the coastal communities, both agencies announced.
Firefighters are sending six boat teams, two helicopter rescue crews and five urban search-and-rescue crews. EMS has ambulance and bus crews, a swift-water rescue crew and other support personnel.
Late last night, we rostered 13 members of our dept—including 6 for a 🛥️ team, 2 🚁 rescue personnel, and five urban… https://t.co/8DkXA22p5Z— Austin Fire Dept (@Austin Fire Dept) 1598278724.0
Treadway said even if the storm moves more westerly, closer to Houston, rain chances would still go up in Austin but only slightly.
Moderately milder temperatures—80s mid-day, highs in the upper 90s—will give way to triple-digit temps come Friday, Treadway said, lasting at least through the weekend.
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(Pexels)
Our 15-year-old granddaughter and her sister, 12, have spent summer weeks with us, usually separately so that we could better get to know each individually. In visits focused on Austin and Port Aransas, the girls seemed to be developing an affection for Texas.
Houston and Dallas are two great American cities, the 4th and 9th largest, each loaded with cultural treasures, each standing in glittering and starchy contrast to Austin’s more louche, T-shirts and shorts ways.
Three hours up I-35, Dallas loomed before us as a set of gray skyscrapers in a filmy haze, accessed only through a concrete mixmaster of freeways, ramps and exits. I drove with false confidence. Be calm, I said to myself, it will all end in 10 minutes under the hotel entrance canopy. And it did.
The pool at the Crescent Court Hotel in Dallas. (Crescent Court Hotel)
We stayed three nights at the Crescent Court Hotel ($622 a night for two queens), a high-end hotel in Uptown, patronized by women in white blazers, business people in suits, and tall, lean professional athletes, their shiny Escalades and Corvettes darting in and out, and other celebrities like Bill Barr, the former attorney general who shoe-horned his ample self into a Toyota.
Each morning as I walked to Whole Foods for a cappuccino, a fellow identified by a bellman as Billy the Oilman arrived in his Rolls Royce Phantom. Where does he park? “Wherever he wants to. He likes the Starbucks here.”
We garaged our more modest set of wheels for the visit. We were chauffeured for tips by Matt Cooney and Alfonza “The Rev” Scott in the hotel’s black Audi sedan. They drove us to museums, restaurants and past the enclaves of the rich and famous. In Highland Park, The Rev pointed out the homes of the Dallas Cowboys' Jerry Jones and Troy Aikman along with the family compound of the Hunts, oil and gas tycoons.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s “Cartier and Islam” exhibit (until Sept. 18) attracted an older crowd; the nearby Perot Museum of Nature and Science was a powerful whirlpool of kids’ groups ricocheting from the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the oil fracking exhibit. Watch your shins.
A Geogia O'Keeffe oil painting called "Ranchos Church, New Mexico" at the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art. (Rich Oppel)
For us, the best museum was the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, a 50-minute, madcap drive away via a 75 mph toll lane along I-30. Don’t try it during rush hour. The Carter has an exquisite collection of Remington paintings and sculptures and an excellent array of 19th and 20th-century paintings as well. Pick one museum? The Amon Carter. Peaceful, beautiful, uncrowded, free admission and small enough to manage in two hours.
The Fort Worth Stockyards, a place of history (with a dab of schmaltz), fun and good shopping, filled one of our mornings. The 98 acres brand the city as Cowboy Town, with a rodeo and a twice-daily (11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.) cattle drive. We shopped for boots, drank coffee and watched the “herd” of 18 longhorns. So languid was their progress that if this were a real market drive the beef would have been very tough and leathery before it hit the steakhouse dinner plate.
The cattle drive at the Fort Worth Stockyards. (Rich Oppel)
But we could identify: the temperature was 97. “I saw a dog chasing a cat today,” said the emcee, deploying a very old joke. “It was so hot that both were walking.”
With limited time, we chose three very different restaurants:
- Nobu, in the Crescent Court Hotel; Jia, a modern Chinese restaurant in Highland Park; and Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth. Nobu’s exotic Japanese menu set us back $480, with tip, for four (we had a guest), but it was worth it.
- Jia was an ordinary suburban strip mall restaurant, but with good food and a reasonable tab of $110 for four.
- Joe T.’s is an 85-year-old Fort Worth institution (think Matt’s El Rancho but larger), a fine Mexican restaurant where a meal with two drinks was $115.
Sushi at high-end restaurant Nobu. (Crescent Hotel)
It was all a splurge for a grandchild’s visit. Now we will get back to our ordinary road trips of Hampton Inns, where a room rate is closer to the Crescent Court’s overnight parking rate of $52. And to corner cafes in small towns.
Did Dallas change our 15-year-old’s view of Texas? “Yes. I think it’s a lot cooler than I did. The fashion, the food.” So, not only Austin is cool. Take Texas as a whole. It’s a big, complex, diverse and wonderful state.
