Tropical Storm Edouard makes landfall near Texas-Louisiana border

By Meteorologists Briana Waxman, Chris Dolce

(CNN) — Heavy rain and gusty winds are lashing the Texas-Louisiana border as tiny Tropical Storm Edouard pushes inland after making landfall Tuesday afternoon.

Edouard had sustained winds of 60 mph at landfall near Johnson Bayou, Louisiana, just after 2 p.m. CT Tuesday, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm did strengthen before coming ashore, but avoided the worst-case scenario of rapid intensification into a hurricane.

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Edouard’s compact size will limit its impact. Flooding rainfall in southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana is its most widespread threat, but only a small coastal section of these areas will experience the strongest wind gusts.

Here’s the latest:

• Edouard’s inner core is pounding areas just west of the Texas-Louisiana border with wind gusts between 60 and 70 mph along with torrential rainfall in excess of 2 inches per hour.
• Less intense rainbands extend about 40 miles from the storm’s center, across portions of southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas.
• Up to 5 inches of rain have fallen in parts of Jefferson County on Texas’ eastern Gulf Coast. A Level 3 of 4 threat of flooding rain continues through Tuesday night for a part of southeast Texas, including Beaumont and Port Arthur. A small portion of southeast Texas is under this threat level on Wednesday too.
• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott activated the state’s Emergency Operations Center to prepare for potential impacts. More than 1,500 response personnel have been mobilized, along with aircraft, swift water rescue boats and high-water vehicles.

Latest forecast

Heavy rainfall is the storm’s biggest concern.

Much of southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana, from Houston to Lake Charles, Louisiana, are at risk for flash flooding through Tuesday night. The bull’s-eye shifts north on Wednesday from Houston and College Station to just south of Dallas.

Torrential rainfall rates of 2 to 4 inches per hour will be more than enough to cause flash flooding, especially on roads. Storm totals of 3 to 6 inches are expected from the upper Texas coast into east-central Texas, with up to 10 to 15 inches possible in isolated spots, according to the National Weather Service in Houston.

The city has been preparing for flooding by staging high water rescue vehicles and lowering the water level in Lake Houston, Ruth Tovar, spokesperson for the Houston Office of Emergency Management, told CNN.

Far southwestern Louisiana could receive 2 to 4 inches.

Edouard’s tropical storm-force winds extend only 25 miles from its center. That will limit the potential for power outages and downed trees to a very small area near where it crossed the coast in southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana. A buoy near the Texas-Louisiana border recorded a gust of 71 mph just before landfall Tuesday afternoon.

Edouard will die out over eastern Texas on Wednesday. The storm’s leftover moisture could fuel scattered storms in eastern Texas on Thursday, but the flood threat should end.

El Niño is bossing hurricane season

Another short-lived storm fits with what the 2026 Atlantic season has delivered so far due to a strengthening and potentially record-breaking El Niño.

The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season’s activity is running just 11% of average as of August 30, according to one measure.

The most recent storm, Dolly, fell apart in the open Atlantic on August 28 after lasting just 24 hours. Cristobal disintegrated just as quickly in the northern Atlantic on August 13. The other two storms, Arthur and Bertha, had brief shelf lives in the Gulf in June and July, respectively.

The Atlantic season’s first hurricane is three weeks late compared to the average. It’s the longest the Atlantic has gone without a hurricane since 2022, when Danielle formed on September 2.

The Atlantic’s latest first hurricane happened on September 11, according to satellite-assisted records dating to 1966. Hurricanes Gustav in 2002 and Humberto in 2013 hold a tie for that record.

September is the typical peak of Atlantic hurricane season thanks to a combination of more favorable weather ingredients.

The most basic building block is warmer water temperatures, which peak in September after basking in summer’s heat, and provide fuel for storms to form and strengthen.

Lower wind shear, aka tropical-system kryptonite, is the other big ingredient. Wind shear involves changes in wind speed and direction at different levels of the atmosphere, and it can rip apart anything from budding tropical systems to fully developed hurricanes.

But this year’s El Niño has made wind shear unusually strong and widespread in the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean. That has stifled storm chances and ripped apart storms like Dolly.

It’s also the main reason forecasters have called for a muted season overall.

But that’s no reason to ignore the rest of hurricane season completely. Storms can still find windows of opportunity to form and become a threat, even in an overall subdued season.

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CNN’s Kate S. Petersen and Meteorologists Dakota Smith, Tyler Ory and Mary Gilbert contributed to this report.