Tropical Storm Ingrid chugged across the open Atlantic early Friday while Texas and Louisiana residents cleaned up after Hurricane Humberto.
Pricilla Sonnier looks at damage to her home caused by Hurricane Humberto on Thursday in High Island, Texas.
Ingrid's maximum sustained winds were 40 mph, barely strong enough to classify it as a tropical storm, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. It was about 805 miles east of the Lesser Antilles, moving to the west-northwest at about 7 mph.
Over the next 24 hours, the storm is expected to strengthen slightly while continuing on its trek, but the long-range forecast shows Ingrid weakening to a tropical depression late Monday as it gets closer to the Lesser Antilles.
Most of the computer forecast models show Ingrid eventually moving in a more northerly direction, which would take it out into the central Atlantic and away from both the United States and the Caribbean, according to the National Hurricane Center. However, tropical systems can be unpredictable, and long-range forecasts can change.
Ingrid is the ninth named storm of the 2007 Atlantic season.
What is left of the eighth, Humberto, is bringing welcome rain Friday to parched northern Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee.
The storm came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane early Thursday at High Island, Texas. Its 85-mph winds tore the roofs off numerous homes and other buildings, knocked down trees and downed power lines. See damage caused by Humberto »
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Although it quickly diminished to a tropical storm and then a depression, its heavy rain caused flooding in some areas, and more than 100,000 people were without power, CNN's Sean Callebs reported.
East Bay Bayou, Texas, received 14 inches of rain, while 6.5 inches were recorded in Beaumont and Galveston, Texas, CNN's Reynolds Wolf reported. In Louisiana, Lake Arthur recorded 5.2 inches and Lake Charles had more than 3 inches, he said.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry declared Galveston, Jefferson and Orange counties disaster areas Thursday.
"We're pushing in generators, water and ice to affected areas, particularly those who have lost power," Robert Black, Perry's spokesman, told The Associated Press. "We're working with the private sector to get power restored as quickly as possible."
On High Island, Humberto ripped the roof and siding off the home of Jack and Connie Payton.
On Thursday, Jack Payton watched as people helped salvage items from the house, AP reported.
"I won't say I'm lucky. I'm blessed," he said.
A man in Bridge City, Texas, was the only person known to have been killed by Humberto. An aluminum roof collapsed on him as he watched the storm early Thursday morning.
In Louisiana, the storm was blamed for a tractor-trailer accident and moved a house off its foundation.
Danny Hunter, 59, of Chauvin, Louisiana, wasn't about to let that happen to his house.
The town, 18 miles from the Gulf Coast, was devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. After those storms ripped through coastal Louisiana in 2005, the town united to "put this bayou back together," said Hunter, who has lived in Chauvin for 19 years.
"The last one we had, I lost everything," he said. Since then, he has put his five-bedroom house on stilts. "It ain't gonna get me this time. I'm 11 feet in the air."
Forecasters were impressed with how rapidly the storm grew over 18 hours, from a tropical depression with 35-mph winds Wednesday to a hurricane with 85-mph winds Thursday morning.
Only three other storms -- Blanche in 1969, Harvey in 1981 and Alberto in 1982 -- have blown up so rapidly, the AP reported.
"To put this development in perspective, no tropical cyclone in the historical record has ever reached this intensity at a faster rate near landfall," a senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, James Franklin, wrote in an online discussion. "It would be nice to know ... someday ... why this happened
