The first named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, named Alberto, formed in the southern Gulf of Mexico late Wednesday morning. Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center declared the storm formed about 295 miles south-southeast of Brownsville, Tex. as torrential downpours were moving ashore in South Texas and northeast Mexico.
Texas
Tropical Alberto forms while bringing flooding rains and an ocean surge to Texas
The storm is forecast to make landfall in northeast Mexico Thursday morning while spreading impacts as far north as coastal Louisiana.
It’s the United States’ first taste of tropical trouble, but experts are calling for a long, busy season with many more threats on the way.
While approaching the coast of northeast Mexico, the potential tropical storm was also pushing a surge of ocean water ashore, leading to coastal flooding along the southern Texas coast early Wednesday. Social media video showed water inundating coastal communities, flowing over roads and underneath elevated homes while overwhelming storms drains.
Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center said the peak storm surge could reach up to 2 to 4 feet, including around Galveston Bay.
Flood watches blanket South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley, and stretch along the coastline to Cameron Parish, La. The alerts no longer include Houston, since the heaviest rains should stay primarily south of the metro.
A tropical storm warning does, however, cover coastal counties from just south of Galveston to the U.S.-Mexico border, and incudes Rockport, Corpus Christi and Brownsville. While the system may not organize enough to earn the name Alberto, tropical storm-force winds with 50-mph gusts are still probable along the shoreline.
Rockport was gusting to 36 mph around 7 a.m. Central time, and Padre Island to 39 mph. Rainfall totals have been light thus far, with Brownsville leading the pack at 0.95 inches. That said, the core of the deep tropical moisture, and subsequent downpours, will soon arrive.
As of 10 a.m. Central time, Alberto had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph and was moving west at 8 mph. The Hurricane Center said Alberto is a large tropical storm with tropical-storm-force winds extending up to 415 miles north of the center.
Scattered downpours were pivoting ashore in South Texas, and will become more numerous and intense as the day wears on. The heaviest rains will last from noon to midnight in southern regions, and probably won’t make it much north of San Antonio or Victoria.
A widespread 4 to 8 inches is likely in South Texas, with localized totals over 10 inches possible. Downpours will taper to intermittent showers by early Thursday.
A near record-moist air mass will be in place, allowing for intense rainfall rates. A weather balloon launched Wednesday morning from Brownsville recorded 2.78 inches of moisture present from the bottom to the top of the atmosphere. That’s just shy of the 2.93-inch record set on July 17, 1996.
Some of the storm’s most serious flooding is probable in northeast Mexico and Central America.
“Life-threatening flooding and mudslides are likely in and near areas of higher terrain across the Mexican states of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas, including the cities of Monterrey and Ciudad Victoria,” the Hurricane Center wrote.
However, some of the rainfall in Mexico will be quite beneficial, as the area has been enduring serious drought.
Rains from a large, swirling area of showers and thunderstorms across the southwest Gulf of Mexico and Central America, known as the Central American Gyre, have produced disastrous flooding in parts Guatemala and El Salvador, causing at least 14 fatalities, according to the Associated Press. This same gyre spawned the potential tropical storm heading into Mexico and could give rise another in the Gulf of Mexico next week.
It’s still looking like 40- to 50-mph gusts will be possible along the immediate coastline from Houston-Galveston southward, with lesser but still blustery winds expected inland.
The onshore flow will push water against the coast, leading to a surge of up to 2 to 4 feet in the most prone areas and 1 to 3 feet elsewhere. Because of the system’s sprawling circulation, the surge was forecast to affect areas hundreds of miles from its center, as far away as the western shore of Louisiana.
Even though Potential Tropical Cyclone 1 is well south of us and is expected to move into Mexico, this is what it’s doing along the Southeast Texas coast. This video was shot this morning is Sea Isle on the west end of Galveston. (Video: George and Alice Jensen)… pic.twitter.com/N0CMsMVo7C
— KHOU 11 News Houston (@KHOU) June 19, 2024
With landfalling tropical cyclones and disturbances, sporadic tornadoes sometimes occur ahead, and to the right, of the center. Since South Texas will be in the “front right quadrant” of the system, a subtle change of low-level winds with height, known as wind shear, could support an isolated tornado risk.
The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center has advertised a Level 1 out of 5 Marginal risk for severe weather.
Jason Samenow contributed to this report.
Texas
US immigration officer shoots and kills man in Texas
Man, identified as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, is latest to be killed by ICE officers since President Trump took power.
Published On 8 Jul 2026
A United States immigration agent fatally shot a man in Houston, Texas, while officers were attempting to stop his vehicle, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said.
The man killed on Tuesday was identified as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, described by ICE as a Mexican national and “illegal alien” who attempted to evade arrest during a “targeted enforcement operation” by federal immigration officers.
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Ronaldo Salgado, who identified himself as Salgado Araujo’s son, told the Spanish-language television station Telemundo Houston that his father was shot while he was looking for workers to hire in the area.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, said Salgado Araujo ignored commands to stop his vehicle, saying he “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer”.
In past shooting incidents, including the January killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, immigration officials had said that their officers were being attacked when the two were shot, claims vigorously disputed in both incidents.
Video footage captured on Tuesday by a surveillance camera from a nearby business and reviewed by the Reuters news agency showed a person lying on the ground beside a white van and surrounded by officers, in what appeared to be the aftermath of the shooting.
Salgado Araujo was targeted in an operation because he was living in the country without legal permission, according to DHS.
Democratic US Representative Sylvia Garcia called for an independent and thorough investigation of ICE’s claims about the fatal shooting.
“All available footage, communications, and other evidence should be preserved and reviewed as part of a full and impartial investigation,” Garcia posted on social media.
Juan Proano, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, echoed Garcia’s calls for a transparent investigation into ICE’s actions.
“We don’t take DHS at their word at all,” Proano told The Associated Press news agency. “There should be an independent investigation, and they should release all the videos.”
There have been at least six fatal shootings by federal immigration officers since the start of President Donald Trump’s intensified immigration enforcement crackdown.
Good, a 37-year-old US citizen, was shot in the head by a federal immigration agent during a crackdown in Minneapolis. DHS also said Good was trying to hit the agent with her vehicle, which local officials and witnesses disputed, saying she was only trying to drive away.
The backlash from Good’s killing and other similar incidents led ICE to step back from some of its more controversial operations.
However, Tuesday’s deadly confrontation in Houston came amid a recent increase in the number of ICE arrests nationwide, with immigration officers picking up about 2,000 migrants a day last week, Reuters reported.
Texas
Trump takes credit for Toyota moving some truck production from Mexico to Texas: ‘That’s what tariffs do’
Toyota is planning a $3.6 billion expansion of its Texas truck assembly plant. President Donald Trump took credit for the investment.
On Monday, the automaker announced the multibillion-dollar investment to add a second vehicle assembly line at its San Antonio manufacturing campus to support production of the Tacoma pickup. Toyota said the expansion project would shift some of the midsize truck’s production from its Mexico plants to San Antonio over roughly 4 years. Toyota will still build some Tacoma models and the Corolla in Mexico.
While Toyota did not attribute the expansion to tariffs in its announcement and the company is not fully exiting production in Mexico, Trump said the fresh investment was a sign that his tariffs were working.
“It came over the wires that Toyota is moving out of Mexico into the United States, and building one of the biggest truck and car plants ever built,” Trump said on Tuesday during a visit to Ankara, Turkey. “It’s amazing. That’s what tariffs do, properly used.”
Toyota said the investment will create 2,000 jobs and add 2.5 million square feet to the site, doubling the company’s Texas footprint by 2030.
Toyota
On Monday, Ted Ogawa, president and CEO of Toyota Motor North America, said the investment reflected the company’s “confidence in the region’s workforce, innovation, and long-term growth potential.”
The move gives Trump a high-profile example of a well-recognized company creating manufacturing jobs. His administration has argued that tariffs incentivize companies — particularly automakers — to reshore manufacturing in America and reduce reliance on foreign production.
Toyota’s announcement also comes amid major uncertainty for automakers with plants in North America. The USMCA — the trilateral free trade pact between the US, Canada, and Mexico struck during Trump’s first term — is under review after the US declined to renew the treaty in its current form on July 1. The Trump administration is reportedly pushing to change the agreement so 50% of all automotive parts and manufacturing would happen in the US.
Toyota also nodded to that trade uncertainty in its release, saying it remained committed to operations in all three countries while encouraging “a quick resolution to USMCA” to keep North America globally competitive.
Texas
Supreme Court won’t block Texas from enforcing a law requiring age verification for app downloads
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to block Texas from enforcing a state law that requires apps stores to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent for minors seeking to download apps or make in-app purchases on mobile phones.
Justice Samuel Alito, in a pair of one-sentence orders, denied petitions by plaintiffs who claim that the Texas App Store Accountability Act violates users’ constitutional rights to free speech.
Last month, a three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law can take effect. The panel suspended a district court’s ruling last December that the law is unconstitutional.
The plaintiffs suing to block the law include the Computer & Communications Industry Association and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is a defendant in both cases.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that the law impermissibly seeks to limit access to content protected by the First Amendment, including news and educational material.
“Equity and the public interest support relief because protecting First Amendment rights — and parents’ rights to supervise their children as they see fit, not as the government tells them they should — is always in the public interest,” wrote attorneys for Students Engaged in Advancing Texas.
Attorneys from Paxton’s office argued that the law protects children from “dangerous modern products.”
“A child with access to an app store and a mobile device (such as a tablet or smartphone) can potentially download any number of software applications, potentially agreeing to invasions of the child’s privacy and sale of the child’s data and be exposed to any conceivable content without parental consent or even parental knowledge,” they wrote.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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