Hurricane Dolly Heads for Texas
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news tonight - Dolly is now a hurricane and gathering force. We'll have the new advisory from the Hurricane Center on where it's headed and when.Also tonight, face-off: Barack Obama in the Middle East talking about peace and the surge; John McCain at home taking a tough shot at Obama, saying Obama would rather win the election than win in Iraq. And what many Democrats will no doubt jump on tomorrow, McCain tonight saying Obama has the timeline of the surge all wrong. But does in fact McCain have it all wrong? We'll check the facts. Also breaking tonight, Warren Jeffs, the fallen polygamist leader, new charges against him, stunning new legal developments. We'll bring you all of that; a very big night of breaking stories. We begin with Hurricane Dolly targeting the Texas Gulf Coast. Warnings are up tonight, from Brownsville to Corpus Christi. The major concern there, not just the wind, but what is expected to be massive amounts of rain. CNN's severe weather expert Chad Myers as always is tracking the storm. He joins us with the latest -- Chad.</s>CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, the 11:00 o'clock advisory Anderson, finally came off. The only good news and bad news is that we have is that the bad news is I don't have time to make any graphics here before I can get it to you here. But here it is word for word from the Hurricane Center; Dolly is a little bit stronger tonight. And you can almost begin to see that the backside of this is getting a full-sized eye. This is still open as we call it over here. The eye wall has not made its way all the way over to the east side. But an 80-mile-per-hour sustained wind now, with gusts probably to almost 100 miles per hour moving towards the Brownsville area, Matamoros, this will be northern Mexico; a very populated part of northern Mexico here as well. And then into Brownsville and then we get back over here into South Padre Island and then McAllen from there. So what we're talking about is a lot of rainfall. We are talking about some wind damage and some of the computer estimates bringing in the wind damage here to about three -- yes, there it is, right there, $3.6 billion dollars across south Texas because of this. Now, this is economic loss because of people not being there as tourists. This is economic loss because of broken windows, shingles, buildings out of work, people out of work, people displaced because their homes are knocked down, whatever it may be. This is forecast to about 120-mile-per-hour gusts. We don't have that quite yet; not 120 miles per hour gust. 100-mile-per-hour gusts but not 120. So this may be a little high on the estimate scale, but think about $3.6 billion compared to what Katrina made on up there into New Orleans, numbers exponentially -- exponentially higher there as we've looked at this storm compared to that storm. So the good news/bad news, yes, the storm is here. This is the latest here. This is the very, very latest; the graphics coming in automatically for me, 25.1 north, 96.0 west. Winds are 80, gusting to 100 miles per hour and the middle of the line. Now we can pretty much focus on the line. Its close enough, we don't have to worry about the cone because the cone is only that wide. So we're not talking about Corpus Christi anymore for a landfall possibility. But all the way up to about -- that's north of South Padre Island. Now the good news is there's a county right here called Kennedy County. There's 414 people live there. Have you ever seen the King Ranch? Ever seen the big ford F-750 King Ranch trucks? That's what they're talking about, we're talking about King Ranch. This is a huge almost the state of Rhode Island ranch here, where there are more cows than people. I guess that's good news to get the cows out of the way. But then the rain moves into the Rio Grand Valley, Anderson, and that's when the rain starts. And because it isn't going to move, see it's kind of dying right here, it is going to sit there and it is going to rain for days and that will cause flooding; 15-inches of rain possible with this storm.</s>COOPER: How quickly will it dissipate as a hurricane once it's over land?</s>MYERS: Oh probably, because this is the desert, I mean we're not talking of like going over the Yucatan peninsula, which is essentially a wet kind of a swampy area, marshy area, this is a desert down here. And I would say this is going to die in, it will be less than a hurricane in 15, 16 hours and then after that it'll be a tropical depression in two days.</s>COOPER: All right, Chad Myers with the latest. Chad, thanks. It's not going to be a picnic on Padre Island, those words of warning echoed by Chad about Hurricane Dolly today, from the director of the National Hurricane Center. About 1.5 million people are in the path of the storm along the Texas coast and South Padre Island is right in the bull's eye. That's where "360's" Gary Tuchman is tonight. He joins us again live. Gary, what's going on now?</s>GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, the outer bands are just starting to move in. We're having sporadic heavy rains and high winds behind me. I think this a fascinating story. This is the Blue Sky Souvenir stand; almost every business is boarded up and closed. But the guy who owns the Blue Sky says he has too many windows to put up boards, so he's flying his flag and he's staying open until his normal midnight closing time, because he says he has nowhere else to go. But as you could see, there are even some customers who've come in, to buy some souvenirs, tourists. Most of the tourists however, have left. This is South Padre Island, this is the furthest south you can go in the state of Texas along the coast. And as you'd said, this is in the bull's eye, Anderson. There's a lot of concern about the possibility of immense flood damage here. This is a Category 1 hurricane; this is not a hurricane that normally will blow down buildings like we saw in the coast of Mississippi during hurricane Katrina. One thing you got to remember in New Orleans most of the damage were from the levees is breaking, not from the wind. That was a category 3 storm, ultimately Katrina. This is a category 1 storm but there's great concern about floodings and similar concerns Katrina with levees. Behind us, Mexico, at a 15 minutes drive from here, the Rio Grand River and there's concern that levees may not be strong enough. And there may be immense flooding. A lot of concern in northern Mexico; concern because it's very hilly there. And people here are very worried but the fact is they are not used to get hit directly by a hurricane here. Anyone under the age of 30 doesn't remember a hurricane directly, hitting it 1980, the last one Hurricane Allen, a 150 miles per hour went came to here, killed two people, caused big problems with flooding and that what authorities are very concerned about. Midday tomorrow, the brunt of Hurricane Dolly is expected to be here -- Anderson.</s>COOPER: So most of the people have evacuated?</s>TUCHMAN: Most of the people have evacuated, there's not a mandatory evacuation order in effect, only a voluntary evacuation but as we know, mandatory orders don't mean they arrest people that just means the police say you're at your own risk at this point. They're telling people they should leave. Most people and there are more than 100 between 100,000 and 200,000 people here, in a busy summer weeks and most people it seem they are gone. But we still see people going up and down the road. We still see people going in to the Blue Sky Souvenir stand to buy their souvenirs.</s>COOPER: All right, Gary Tuchman, stay safe. Up next, Barack Obama in the Middle East, John McCain here at home, actually saying Obama would rather win the election than win the war. Later, "Breaking News", new charges against Warren Jeffs this time involving the notorious ranch in Texas. And he cleaned up Gotham City, but now Christian Bale "Batman" is in hot water with authorities in London. Details when "360" continues.