The U.S. National Hurricane Center is watching two tropical storms, one in the Gulf of Mexico, the other in the Caribbean, that are expected to make landfall late Friday and early Saturday. Forecasters say Tropical Storm Gonzalo was, just after midday Friday, in the far western Atlantic Ocean just outside the Caribbean Sea, about 715 kilometers east of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. A hurricane-hunter aircraft indicated Gonzalo’s maximum sustained winds at the time were about 75 kilometers per hour.  There had been some concern Gonzalo could strengthen into a hurricane, but the hurricane watches for Barbados and St. Vincent and the Grenadines have been dropped. Those islands remain under a tropical storm warning and are expected to experience heavy rain and the potential for flash flooding. The storm is expected to weaken as it moves west in the Caribbean Sea. Gonzalo became the earliest named seventh tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season on Wednesday, shattering the 15-year record of Tropical Storm Gert. Meanwhile, the southern coast of Texas is bracing for Tropical Storm Hanna, which is expected to make landfall near Corpus Christi early Saturday. The storm is strengthening, and just after midday Friday it had maximum sustained winds of 85 kilometers per hour and was about 375 kilometers east of Corpus Christi. Forecasters predicted the storm, along with its damaging winds, would produce heavy rainfall and the possibility of life-threatening flash floods. A storm surge is also expected to flood areas in and around Corpus Christi with 30 centimeters to 1 meter of water, depending on the tides.
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