we're following right now the first hurricane of the season. hurricane alex. there it is, upgraded to a dangerous cat 2 in the process of coming ashore. chad myers is monitoring late developments from the "weather center." we begin with reynolds wolf in the thick of it on south padre island, texas. >> reporter: the hurricane is making landfall about roughly 100 miles to the south of our location. it looks like texas will escape the mere brunt of the storm. but that is not to say that they weren't scathed by this thing. strong winds have come through here. so strong, we had to shut down some of the bridges that go back to the mainland. on the other side of the intercoastal waterway, we've got widespread reports of tornadoes dropping down in some places but i've got to tell you, the city of brownsville was prepared. they did hand out over 60,000 sand bags in the area. they've got, again, shelters supplied for roughly 2,000 families and governor rick perry declared 19 different counties in texas disaster areas and deployed 1,900 troops to the area. they really did dodge a bullet. two years ago they weren't as lucky when hurricane dolly made landfall. less than a mile from our present location.