Upon making landfall on the central Texas coast, Claudette's storm surge reached a maximum height of in Galveston. Freeport reported a "storm tide"—the overall rise of water over the mean low tide—of . Claudette produced moderate rainfall across southern Texas, peaking at in Tilden. On Matagorda Island, the local weather station measured winds of —the only official report of hurricane-force winds along the coastline. However, several offshore oil rigs reported winds of up to , and one unofficial reading in Seadrift indicated winds of . This report would suggest the storm was a low-end Category 2 hurricane, though this contradicted Hurricane Hunters' data, which pointed to a storm of a lesser intensity.