Tropical Storm Edouard Left Houston Open and Beaumont Dark

Tropical Storm Edouard came ashore near Johnson Bayou at 2:20 p.m. Tuesday with 60 mph winds. The National Hurricane Center placed landfall on the Louisiana side of the border, about 80 miles northeast of Houston. Houston ISD stayed open.

Entergy Texas reported about 70,000 customers without power by 7:15 p.m. as the center crossed the Golden Triangle. Conroe ISD and Willis ISD then canceled Wednesday classes as the remnant crawled toward the Piney Woods.

Edouard Made Landfall Near Johnson Bayou

The storm was still a small tropical cyclone 80 minutes before landfall. The National Hurricane Center’s 1 p.m. public advisory on Edouard put the center 25 miles southeast of Port Arthur with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph and tropical-storm-force winds extending only 25 miles from the middle of the storm.

That tight wind field is why Houston felt a rain event and Beaumont felt a landfall. A National Ocean Service station at Calcasieu Pass, Louisiana, had already logged a 44 mph sustained wind and a 52 mph gust. A 71 mph gust was later reported near the Texas-Louisiana line.

The Texas Division of Emergency Management posted the landfall call and the usual warning to stay off flooded roads.

Tropical Storm Edouard has made landfall.

☔️Monitor Local Conditions
🚗Turn Around, Don’t Drown
📺Stay Informed

Tropical Weather Resources for Texans: https://t.co/fJUcT4h23j pic.twitter.com/CDTKyQAL14

— Texas Division of Emergency Management (@TDEM) September 1, 2026

EDOUARD’S CLOCK FROM THE GULF TO LUFKIN

1. Monday afternoon, Aug. 31: The National Hurricane Center classifies the system as Tropical Depression Five. CenterPoint Energy activates its Emergency Operations Center for what it had been calling Invest 97L.
2. Monday evening, Aug. 31: The depression becomes Edouard, the fifth named storm of the 2026 Atlantic season. Harris County warns of heavy rain through Wednesday.
3. Tuesday, 1 p.m. CDT: Edouard sits 25 miles southeast of Port Arthur at 50 mph. The hurricane watch and storm surge warning are dropped. A tropical storm warning still covers Port Bolivar to the Vermilion/Iberia Parish line.
4. Tuesday, 2:20 p.m. CDT: Makes landfall near Johnson Bayou, Louisiana, at 60 mph.
5. Tuesday, 7:15 p.m. CDT: Entergy Texas reports about 70,000 customers without power and more than 1,500 workers in the field.
6. Tuesday night: Weakens to a tropical depression. Coastal tropical storm warnings are discontinued.
7. Wednesday, 4 a.m. CDT: The center is 30 miles south-southwest of Lufkin, moving north-northwest at 5 mph with 35 mph sustained winds and a 1004 mb pressure.

Governor Greg Abbott said the state emergency operation center was running around the clock, with 20 agencies and 1,500 state personnel activated plus rescue aircraft, swift-water boats and high-water vehicles. Houston Mayor John Whitmire, after the city moved to a Level 2 high-readiness posture at 9 a.m. Tuesday, said Houston was “better prepared today than ever in Houston’s history.”

Ten Districts Went Dark on Tuesday

The first school call was not a Houston-wide shutdown. It was an east and northeast belt that sits closer to Chambers County, Liberty County and the Ship Channel than to downtown.

Anahuac ISD, Channelview ISD, Crosby ISD, Dayton ISD, Galena Park ISD, Huffman ISD, Humble ISD, Liberty ISD, Sheldon ISD and Splendora ISD closed campuses, offices and activities on Tuesday, Sept. 1. Pasadena, Deer Park, La Porte, Goose Creek, Cleveland and Tarkington joined that list as the forecast locked in east of Interstate 45.

Willis ISD stayed in session Tuesday but sent high school students home at noon, elementary students at 12:45 p.m., pre-kindergarten at 12:55 p.m. and middle school at 1:15 p.m. Conroe ISD trimmed high school dismissal by 30 minutes and elementary dismissal by 15 minutes and killed after-school programs. Houston ISD, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, Aldine ISD, Klein ISD and Spring ISD canceled after-school activities and still ran the instructional day.

TUESDAY VERSUS WEDNESDAY BY DISTRICT

Harris County Department of Education shut its own facilities Tuesday. Lee College in Baytown canceled classes. Galveston ISD kept most campuses open and closed only Crenshaw Environmental Science Magnet, which depends on bus service to Bolivar.

Conroe’s 348 Square Miles Closed Wednesday

Once the center came ashore and the track held north-northwest, the second lost day belonged to Montgomery County and the northern Piney Woods, not to the east Harris districts that had already sat out Tuesday.

Conroe ISD said it closed Wednesday after a meeting with the National Weather Service and Montgomery County Emergency Management. The district covers 348 square miles, and officials said the forecast had the storm moving farther into that footprint Tuesday evening.

Conroe ISD spans 348 square miles, and while some areas may see relatively minor impacts, others may experience heavy rainfall, flooding, power outages, or hazardous road conditions. We must also consider that many of our bus drivers, teachers, and employees commute from areas that may be more heavily affected.

Conroe ISD, Tuesday statement

Willis ISD closed on the same forecast, citing flash flooding where the heaviest bands set up and the need to keep student drivers and staff off early-morning roads. Shepherd ISD, Livingston ISD and Onalaska ISD went to two-hour delays. Goodrich ISD delayed until 10 a.m. Royal ISD kept classes and canceled after-school activities. Magnolia ISD said it planned to stay open.

Conroe said a Thursday operations update would follow as it watched the remnant. That call had not been issued by early Wednesday.

70,000 Entergy Customers Lost Power

The outage map followed the same east-and-north line as the rain. Entergy Texas, which serves about 538,000 customers in 27 counties including Beaumont, Port Arthur, Conroe and The Woodlands, said approximately 70,000 customers are without power as of 7:15 p.m. Tuesday, about 13 percent of its Texas count.

Our crews are doing everything they can to safely restore service to our customers. While high winds, flooding and other conditions can make restoration more challenging, our teams will continue working to reach all areas affected by the storm as soon as it is safe to do so.

Frank Shannon, vice president of reliability, Entergy Texas

The company said it cannot run bucket trucks in sustained winds of 35 mph or higher, a threshold the core still met near the center Wednesday morning. Crews had helicopters, drones, rear-alley machines and high-water vehicles for damage assessment. Customers were pointed to the Texas outage map for restoration times by area.

CenterPoint Energy, which covers Greater Houston, had activated its Emergency Operations Center on Monday and staged about 2,700 frontline electric workers plus more than 100 gas workers. By 11 a.m. Tuesday it had restored power to about 1,000 customers and still had about 750 storm-related outages, a rounding error against Entergy’s evening total. Nathan Brownell, CenterPoint’s vice president of resilience and capital delivery and the incident commander, said the Emergency Operations Center remained activated and that the workforce was focused on restoring service as the storm moved inland.

Beaumont shuttered city offices as the center passed. Before sunrise Wednesday, crews in that city were still looking at dead lights and downed limbs. Beaumont-area accounts described rain blowing sideways and power dropping within an hour of the core. A 90 mph gust claim moved with those posts; the highest figure instruments actually caught near the border was 71 mph.

Polk County Saw 7 to 10 Inches Overnight

Wind was the Golden Triangle problem. Rain is the inland problem, and it set up on a narrow corridor from Chambers County northwest toward Houston County.

The National Weather Service office in Houston kept a Flood Watch through Wednesday evening and put the highest rain risk along and east of I-45, then north of I-10 as the remnant lifted. The Tuesday hydrology discussion called for a 3 to 6 inch swath from Chambers County toward Houston County, with isolated totals of 10 to 15 inches if bands trained. Rainfall rates of 3 to 4 inches an hour were on the table, enough to shove the San Jacinto and Trinity toward action stage.

Overnight radar estimates then showed Polk County at 7 to 10 inches, with the depression still moving slowly enough for those totals to rise. The Weather Prediction Center had portions of the Piney Woods in a Moderate Risk (level 3 of 4) for excessive rainfall on Wednesday. Southwest Louisiana was the lighter side of the same storm, at 2 to 4 inches. Water stood 1 to 2 feet above expected tidal levels in southwestern Louisiana, and the 1 p.m. Tuesday advisory had allowed 1 to 3 feet of inundation from High Island to the Vermilion/Cameron Parish line.

Radar Update 5:30PM: Edouard continues to move inland this evening. Our primary threat remains heavy rainfall and the risk for flash flooding, especially overnight. Flooded roads can be difficult to see at night, so commuters should exercise caution. #TXwx pic.twitter.com/KOb9U6bxFw

— NWS Houston (@NWSHouston) September 1, 2026

WHAT REMAINS IN EFFECT WEDNESDAY

• Flood Watch: In effect through 7 p.m. Wednesday across a large share of Southeast Texas, with the better rain chances north of I-10 and east of I-45.
• Flash flooding: A warning for Devers ran until 6:45 a.m. CDT Wednesday. NWS Houston had already warned that flooded roads are hard to see after dark.
• Wind: Gusts to tropical-storm force could continue near the center for several hours. A wind advisory ran until 1 p.m. Wednesday in some northern zones.
• Rivers: The San Jacinto and Trinity basins remain the inland flood concern if the heavier bands stall.

NWS Shreveport, watching the same slow northwest drift, limited its own impacts to Deep East Texas: flooding, gusty winds and an isolated tornado or two. A tornado threat had been on the books Tuesday afternoon for southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas, described as a brief tornado or two rather than an outbreak.

Houston ISD Kept the Bells Ringing

Houston ISD ran Tuesday and announced it would run Wednesday. That decision matched the meteorology west of the tight rain gradient more closely than a metro-wide closure would have.

Katy ISD stayed open Tuesday. Magnolia ISD planned to stay open Wednesday. The city’s own forecast from the mayor’s briefing was 3 to 5 inches in Houston, with isolated 6 to 9 inches and the 10 to 12 inch conversation reserved for areas east and north of the city. CenterPoint’s Monday night note had even gone out with 2 to 4 inches and winds up to 35 mph for Greater Houston, figures that looked low for Beaumont and roughly fair for the core city.

Harris County’s emergency office had been messaging a rain-and-roads event, not a wind event. Officials listed thunderstorms, hazardous travel and higher flood risk along rivers, streams and bayous, and they pointed residents to ReadyHarris.org, social channels and ReadyHarris Alerts. The county posted a run of Harris County tropical storm alerts as the system organized Monday and as it strengthened Tuesday afternoon. County Judge Lina Hidalgo asked drivers to use caution Tuesday. Houston Fire Marshal administrative offices closed at 1 p.m. Tuesday and planned to reopen at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday.

The classrooms that emptied first were the ones whose buses already roll through the east-side flood map. The classrooms that emptied second were the ones whose staff commute across Montgomery County’s 348 square miles. The largest district in the region never called the day.

A Slow Drift Toward Lufkin

At 4 a.m. Wednesday the depression was a slow, wet leftover 30 miles south-southwest of Lufkin, still capable of tropical-storm-force gusts near its center and of 3 to 4 inch-an-hour bursts in any band that stalled. NWS Houston expected rain chances to ease from south to north late Wednesday as the remnant kept drifting north, then a return to ordinary afternoon storms by Thursday and a hotter, drier weekend under an expanding ridge.

Entergy’s restoration clock depends on wind dropping below the 35 mph bucket-truck limit and on crews reaching flooded spans. CenterPoint’s Houston grid never took the same punch. Conroe still owed families a Thursday answer. The Flood Watch runs until 7 p.m. Wednesday, and the heaviest remaining rain is aimed at the woods north of the districts that closed first.