Rain, Flooding Now Dean's Biggest Threat

Downgraded to tropical storm after 2nd landfall

By Will McCahill, Newser Staff

Posted Aug 22, 2007 6:37 PM CDT

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Rain, Flooding Now Dean's Biggest Threat — A man runs through a street in Poza Rica, as Hurricane Dean enters the state of Veracruz, southern Mexico, Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2007. Hurricane Dean, which crashed into the Caribbean coast of Mexico on Tuesday as the strongest hurricane to hit land in the Atlantic region since 1988, is now over the Veracruz... (Associated Press)

Hurricane Dean hit Mexico again today and poured heavy rains over flood-prone regions, the AP reports. Nobody died in the onslaught, which struck as a Category 2 hurricane and weakened into a tropical storm by evening. But Dean is raising water levels and fears of mudslides and flash floods as winds continue to howl near 70 miles per hour.

Experts say that Dean will drop as much as 20 inches of rain in the region, where flooding killed at least 350 in 1999. One concerned mother fled her home with 5 children and said, "The water is rising. It's entering the houses now." Dean also stretched out into the southern Gulf of Mexico today, where up to 100 oil platforms lay dormant in expectation of the storm. (More Hurricane Dean stories.)

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