Texas cleans up after deadly Beryl slams state before tracking north as post-tropical cyclone

Eastern Texas has been considerably hit with power outages as Beryl, now a tropical depression, moves out of the region.

As of Tuesday at 6.17am CDT, over 2.3 million customers were without power, according to data from poweroutage.us.

Galveston on the coast appears to be one of the worst hit, with over 58,000 out, and Brazoria also shows to have over 36,000 customers with power outages.

The counties of Polk and Liberty also have over 24,000 each with no power.

The number of people without power remains in the millions after the number started to increase after Beryl made landfall yesterday morning.

Flood warnings have been put in place as Tropical Depression Beryl moves out of Texas and further inland in the United States.

Beryl will bring heavy rainfall and possible flash flooding from the Lower and Mid Mississippi Valley to the Great Lakes near Michigan today into Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center said.

A Flood Watch is in effect for portions of Eastern Oklahoma, Northern Arkansas, Central and Southern Missouri, Illinois, Northern Indiana and Southern Michigan.

Beryl is currently only sustaining maximum winds of 30mph (45km/h) and forecasters predict that there will be little change in this strength in the next 48 hours.

Weather experts say that unusually hot ocean temperatures in Beryl’s path were the culprit behind its intensification, providing the storm with increased energy as it swept through the Caribbean before hitting Mexico and the US.

“In the Caribbean Sea it has actually been warmer than its usual peak since mid-May, which is absolutely crazy,” Brian McNoldy, a climate scientist at the University of Miami, told The Guardian. 

“If the ocean already looks like it’s the peak of hurricane season, we are going to get peak hurricanes.”

Ocean heat temperatures keep on smashing their own records year on year, with global ocean temperatures reaching a record high in 2023.

“With a climate-change influenced ocean, we are making extreme storms like this more likely to happen.”

AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva also said that “water temperatures across much of the Gulf of Mexico are essentially as warm as bathtub water. Those warm waters are at the surface, and they extend hundreds of feet down.

“Warm waters act like jet fuel for hurricanes, and it won’t take long for temperatures to rebound in the wake of Beryl,” the expert added.

As Texas spent most of Monday experiencing extreme weather conditions as Hurricane Beryl made landfall, bringing with it mass flooding and strong winds, some areas will now also face heat challenges as temperatures rise.

As officials in Texas move to recover from the damage Beryl has left behind, a heat advisory has been put in place for southeast Texas in effect on Tuesday.

Heat indexes show that temperature values could reach as high as 106F degrees.

“While this would normally be below criteria for a Heat Advisory, the widespread loss of power and air conditioning across SE TX could make for dangerous conditions through the day,” the National Weather Service in Houston said.

“This will be especially true for those still cleaning up outside who may not have a chance to properly cool off.”

As of Tuesday at 7am CDT, over 2.3 million customers were still without power, according to data from poweroutage.us.

Lynnae Wilson, Senior Vice President, Electric Business at CenterPoint told AccuWeather that they were “mobilizing all of our available resources, as well as mutual assistance resources from other utility companies, to begin the process of quickly and safely restoring power to our customers.

“We understand how difficult it is to be without power for any amount of time, especially in the heat. We are laser-focused on the important and time-sensitive work that lies ahead,” she added.

Hurricane Beryl appeared to have damaged the roof of Houston’s NRG stadium after it ripped through the city, leaving destruction of buildings and other structures in its wake.

Images captured by ABC13 show what looks like a hole in a grooved portion of the venue’s retractable roof.

NRG officials told the local outlet that they were waiting for a full assessment to disclose a damage report.

The NRG Stadium is the only rodeo and NFL indoor/outdoor retractable roof stadium that can be configured to utilize a 125,000 square foot space, their website states.

The stadium hosts hundreds of events per year, including concerts, sports, and floor events.

While Hurricane Beryl brought mass destruction to cities and towns around Texas as a Category 1 hurricane, one silver lining it could have brought was to replenish Lake Travis.

However, Austin more or less dodged the heavy impacts of the storm, yet the lake still sits with a water level issue.

“Lake Travis right now is in one of its record low periods. The lowest that it’s ever been was in the drought of the 1950s,” said John Hofmann, executive vice president of water for the Lower Colorado River Authority told local outlet KXAN.

In the 1950s, a tropical storm dumped around 26 inches of rain over Lake Travis, allowing it to rise around 50 feet in 18 hours, KXAN forecaster Jim Spencer said.

While Austin was missed by Beryl, Spencer said a similar event like another tropical system “that comes inland stalls and drops a lot of rainfall” could be “our only hope for a really wet summertime around here.”

Warning Coordination Meteorologist with the National Weather Service, Paul Yura told CBS Austin before Beryl made landfall that “It looks like [Beryl] is not going to be a drought-buster, for especially the areas west of Austin, where we really need to build up some of that water and the aquifer and also the highland.”

“Historically it hasn’t even needed to be a big hurricane, we can just have a tropical depression or even a weaker tropical storm,” said Yura, “Hopefully later in the season can go into the Hill Country and produce a lot of rainfall like we need.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has faced criticism for jetting off to Asia while his state is hammered by a deadly hurricane.

Beryl made landfall along the Texas coast as a category 1 Hurricane early on Monday morning, bringing with it life-threatening storm surge, damaging winds and widespread flooding.

The powerful storm, which was weaker than when it swept through the Caribbean causing mass devastation as a category 5 hurricane last week, damaged homes, cutting off power to more than two million properties and resulted in several deaths.

While emergency responders have banded together to try to keep Texans safe, one rather prominent figure was missing.

On July 5 – while Hurricane Beryl was moving towards the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and was forecast to land in southern Texas by the weekend’s close — Abbott announced that he was heading to Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan to lead an economic development mission.

Organized by the Governor’s Economic Development & Tourism Office and the Texas Economic Development Corporation, the governor left the state that day and is set to return on July 13.

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Hurricane Beryl, now a tropical depression, devastated Houston on Monday, leaving the city to clean up flash flooding, downed power lines, and fallen trees.

Now, the storm has left the state of Texas. Flash floods will affect parts of the Mississippi Valley.

Beryl is then projected to head north toward the Great Lakes by Tuesday night, according to the National Hurricane Center.

On Wednesday, the northeast faces the risk of rainfall and flash floods.

“Deadly hazards remain,” the center warned. The agency encouraged locals to ensure generators are properly ventilated to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning.

Beryl has left more than 2.5 milllion without power across Houston and eastern Texas — meaning no air conditioning as temperatures soar.

The storm has now been downgraded to a tropical depression, but leaves residents to clean up its mess.

On Monday, the then-Category 1 hurricane’s whipping winds knocked down trees, impacted power lines, and caused flash floods in the region.

The timing of the mass power outage occured when temperatures are expected into the 90s on Tuesday in the Houston area, leaving locals without air conditioning.

An outage map from electricity company CenterPoint Energy showed that nearly 1.8 million were still without power as of Tuesday morning. The company estimated that it could restore power to 1 million affected customers by the end of the day on Wednesday.