Nevadans keep an eye on hurricane

While Hurricane Bret failed to deliver on its threat of destruction in Texas, Southern Nevada weather watchers are keeping a wary eye on the weather system that created the storm, anticipating that it could make itself felt here.

As the hurricane's moisture continued to push westward, soaking Southern Texas today, meteorologists say the heavy blanket of clouds could feed into the Mexican monsoon flow that has produced spectacular lightning and flooding in Southern Nevada since July 8.

National Weather Service forecasters said they will not know how the added moisture will affect the Las Vegas area until later this week.

The meteorologists at McCarran International Airport offer three possibilities for the hurricane's effects in Southern Nevada:

* The moisture will produce heavier rains in the Las Vegas Valley, which was declared a disaster area by President Clinton after flooding July 8-16 caused $20.5 million worth of damage to public structures.

* The hurricane's cloud blanket will produce more gray, dreary days for the Las Vegas Valley. That would keep temperatures cooler than normal and reduce the chances for thunderstorms here. The best chance of heavy downpours can occur after the sun heats the valley's air, creating a strong uplift of hot air that fires up thunderheads in the afternoon.

* The huge land masses and mountains of New Mexico and Arizona will wring the rain out of Bret's threatening clouds before they get to Nevada, leaving conditions the same for the Las Vegas Valley. Continued thunderstorms are expected for about another month here.

Weather officials said the former hurricane produced up to 38 inches of rain near Corpus Christi as of this morning, threatening flooding across Texas.

The heavy rains pummeling the area were blamed for a crash on Monday that killed four people. Police said a tractor-trailer jackknifed south of Laredo and hit a pickup, killing the big rig driver and two women and a man in the pickup. Those were the only storm-related deaths.

Authorities ordered voluntary evacuations along the east coast of Texas Sunday as Bret, classified as a Category 4 hurricane packing 140 mph winds, took aim at the U.S. from the Gulf of Mexico. The National Weather Service compared Bret to Hurricane Andrew, a devastating storm that struck south Florida in 1992.

After Bret struck land on Sunday, its winds dropped to 125 mph. Instead of hitting Corpus Christi or Brownsville, 160 miles apart, it squeezed between the two cities. Kenedy County took the brunt of the hurricane. The county boasts 60,000 cows and 458 people.

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