(July 27, 2008)--The remnants of Hurricane Dolly moved through El Paso Saturday, producing a downpour that closed streets, flooded homes and caused the death of one person just across the border in New Mexico.
Authorities said that a traffic fatality today just six miles north of the Texas state line is being attributed to the rain.
New Mexico state police Sergeant Andy Tingwall told the Las Cruces Sun-News that a passenger in a sport utility vehicle was killed when the vehicle hit a large puddle, swerved and then rolled two to three times.
A National Weather Service official says that the rain started around midnight and began moving to the northeast Saturday, but he said that even as the remnants from Dolly move out, moisture brought in by the hurricane was expected to bring showers and thunderstorms over the next two days.
He said some areas of El Paso got as much as 3 inches of rain.
The City of El Paso said in a news release that street crews were pumping water from flooded streets and removing debris that washed onto roads.
The city says it has received 17 reports of flooding in homes.
There were 10 reports of street flooding.
A spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Transportation said the Trans Mountain Highway was closed because of rockslides caused by the rain.
On South Padre Island, tourism officials are actually urging visitors to stay away.
South Padre tourism chief Dan Quandt said law enforcement officers at the causeway entrance have been instructed to turn away people unless they have business on South Padre.
Crews aren’t expected to restore power to the area until sometime later this week, many roads remain impassable, and in some places, gasoline is hard to come by.
Businesses remain closed.
In Harlingen, Valley International Airport has reopened four days after Hurricane Dolly shut it down.
A normal flight scheduled resumed midmorning Sunday after power was restored at the airport.
The Rio Grande Valley's main airport closed Wednesday as Dolly roared across the South Texas coast.
Valley International serves more than 800,000 passengers a year.
It is home to Southwest Airlines, Continental Express, Sun Country Airlines and several cargo airlines.
Meanwhile in the Florida Panhandle, a medical examiner has determined that a Georgia man died after drowning in rough surf caused by Hurricane Dolly.
The medical examiner's office in Panama City performed the autopsy on Jeffrey Evert on Friday.
Local officials had to rescue several swimmers as the storm brought strong winds and heavy rains to the coasts of Texas and Mexico, causing choppy water in the rest of the Gulf of Mexico.
Evert, 56, died Wednesday, the day Dolly made landfall in South Padre Island as a Category 2 hurricane.
A man in Matamoros, Mexico, was electrocuted when he stepped on a downed power line.
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