Tropical Storm Don expected to hit Texas tomorrow

Tropical Storm Don continues to head straight for Texas as the U.S. National Hurricane Center forecasts that it will make landfall shortly before 1 p.m. local time Saturday.

With maximum winds of 50 miles an hour, the storm is expected to hit between Corpus Christi and Brownsville, then track across the southern tip of Texas before entering Coahuila in Mexico sometime tomorrow, Bloomberg reports.

“Slight strengthening is possible before landfall with steady weakening expected after landfall,” the center said, adding that Don is not expected to reach hurricane level.

Don has already forced the shutdown of 11.9 percent of oil production and 6.2 percent of gas output in the Gulf of Mexico – home to 31 percent of U.S. oil output and 7 percent of natural gas production.

But some locals are looking forward to the precipitation onslaught as Texas continues to suffer through one of the worst drought in recent years. Don is expected to drop 3 to 5 inches of rain across southern Texas and another 7 inches in certain areas.

“Someone’s going to get it,” Danielle Hale, director of Emergency Management on Corpus Christi, told MSNBC. “We hope that it’s us.”

Rain started to fall along the southern coast Friday afternoon as a tropical storm warning remained in effect along the Texas coast from the mouth of the Rio Grande to Matagorda. Local emergency management personnel don’t expect much damage beyond having to close beach access roads in some areas.

In Corpus Christi, several commercial flights were canceled because of the storm and Padre Island National Seashore was shut down. As a precaution, the Texas A&M campus also closed Thursday and students were told to evacuate until Monday.