Beryl hits Texas coast, killing 3; flooding, power outages reported

It’s the latest stage of destruction from a storm that has broken records for intensity so early in the hurricane season, fueled by extraordinarily warm Atlantic waters. And some feared it was a harbinger of more storms to come.

“We can’t predict or expect a storm of this magnitude so soon,” said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the county’s third-most populous county with 4.7 million residents. “Most of the hurricane season is still a long way off. We hope for our sanity and safety that there won’t be another storm, but we have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”

For Gulf Coast residents like Mike Beggs, that thought was jarring. He and his wife moved from the Austin area last year to a quiet retirement in an RV on land they own in the waterfront town of Sargent, Texas. Weeks before Beryl forced him to flee inland, flooding from Tropical Storm Alberto inundated a small building on the property and destroyed its freezer.

Now, sitting in his black van, waiting for news of what Sargent might have done, he was already wondering whether it was worth coming back.

“It’s just the beginning of the season and I’ve already had two floods,” he said. “I’m thinking of selling my property and moving up.”

Along the coast, the landscape was one of snapped or uprooted trees, damaged signs, roofs and fences, flooded fields and full or overflowing drainage ditches. Storm surge, or the sudden rise in sea level above the normal tide, reached 4 to 6 feet (1.2 to 1.8 m) along parts of the central Texas coast.

By noon Monday, cleanup had already begun in a hard-hit neighborhood near downtown Lake Jackson, where trees had fallen on some homes, hundreds of branches littered the street and power remained out as the scorching sun reappeared. Heather Broussard and her friends quickly amassed a 10-foot-high pile of debris near the sidewalk on Azalea Street, and there was still much to do.

“It was really horrible,” the 48-year-old Lake Jackson native said. “Do I ever want to go through that again? No.”

At least four people died in the storm, authorities said, including a man who drowned in Houston. One person in Houston was killed in a fire that was likely sparked by storm-related lightning, Mayor John Whitmire said. Two of the deaths confirmed Monday morning occurred in similar circumstances — people seeking refuge in their homes only to be trapped under falling trees. The victims were a 74-year-old grandmother on Houston’s north side who was in her bedroom when the tree crashed, and a 53-year-old father crushed by debris from a collapsing oak tree in Atascocita, about 20 miles northeast of Houston. A woman and children were also in the home and were unharmed, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said on X, formerly Twitter.

Across the Houston area, authorities searched flooded roads for people trapped in their vehicles by rising waters.

“It’s a huge city that’s very automobile-dependent and people need to get to work and school, but they’re just not staying home,” Whitmire said.

The city has experienced many storms in recent years, and even in recent months.

In mid-May, a series of exceptionally strong storms, called derechos, brought wind gusts of more than 100 mph to the Houston area, killing at least eight people, downing trees, blowing out windows from skyscrapers, and knocking out power to about a million people. Then, in late May, severe thunderstorms brought blinding rain, massive hail, and winds of more than 70 mph to Houston. About 300,000 people in Harris County lost power.

Local leaders said Beryl underscored risks for the growing region, which is vulnerable because of its location on flat, low-lying Gulf lands.

Whitmire said the storm highlighted problems with the city’s drainage and generators. Generators failed at police and fire stations as well as the city’s animal shelter, he said. The downtown convention center, which served as a mass shelter during previous storms, was also without power, as were the city’s multi-service centers, almost all of which have no generators, he said.

“Even before the growth, we’ve always lived in a swamp. The people who came before us knew we needed to build this flood control infrastructure and we don’t have anywhere near the infrastructure that we need,” Hidalgo told The Washington Post on Monday afternoon. “This is another kick in the butt to get everybody to make this a priority.”

Beryl’s landfall in Texas was the end of a remarkable, record-breaking 5,000-mile journey that left parts of Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Jamaica in disarray — and likely bearing the fingerprints of climate change.

During its path, Beryl became the most powerful Atlantic storm on record in June. Its intensification from a tropical depression to a Category 4 storm in 48 hours was unprecedented for the time of year. When it reached Category 5 on July 1, it did so earlier than any other Atlantic hurricane on record.

When it hit Texas, it became the 10th hurricane on record to make landfall in the country during the month of July, according to Philip Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University. No other Atlantic hurricane in the past decade has made landfall on U.S. shores this early in the tropical cyclone season, which began in June.

Scientists say there is a clear link to human-caused global warming, which has increased average global temperatures by about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 150 years.

“This type of incredible early-season activity is driven by record warm water temperatures in the tropical Atlantic,” Brian McNoldy, lead researcher at the University of Miami, wrote in a blog post.

Texas is a part of the country that is used to hurricanes, to be sure. But global warming also likely boosted the strength and height of Beryl’s waves. The storm made landfall along a stretch of the Gulf Coast that has seen one of the fastest rates of sea-level rise in the world since 2010, according to a Post analysis. In Galveston, sea levels have risen about 8.4 inches over the past 14 years.

At Rose of Sharon Pentecostal Church in Bay City, as Pastor Janie Jo Lopez picked up debris and mopped up water from the sanctuary floor, she thought about the courage of her parents, who came from Houston and founded the church decades ago.

She spoke about how the small congregation has weathered the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed the lives of several members, including her husband. She also talked about how the church had already been rebuilt once after Hurricane Harvey and its relentless rains destroyed the interior.

Now Beryl has ripped off the metal roofing and plywood, flooding the classrooms and sanctuary.

“Our first words were, ‘We’re going to rebuild,'” Lopez said. “We’ve done it before, we’ll do it again.”

In Surfside Beach, debris strewn across flooded roads bore witness to the previous night’s violence: mattresses and nightstands, shingles and insulation, wooden staircases and trash cans, damaged and broken power lines, framing lumber with nails sticking out, even a vacuum cleaner. A strip of familiar A-frame homes was destroyed by the surging waves.

“I was heartbroken,” Alison Hester, 52, said of the sights she saw as she crossed the bridge into the town where she has lived most of her life.

The risk of torrential rain from the remnants of Beryl is now shifting north and east. Heavy rain is expected in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri Monday through Tuesday, and then in parts of Illinois, Indiana and Michigan by Tuesday and Wednesday.

Meanwhile, meteorologists were monitoring the possibility that Beryl could increase the risk of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. On Tuesday, the severe risk could shift northeastward to parts of western Tennessee and Kentucky and southern parts of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

Dennis reported from Lake Jackson, Bay City and Surfside Beach, Texas, Hennessy-Fiske from Houston and Dance from Washington. Dan Stillman, Ian Livingston, Kasha Patel, Kevin Crowe, Jason Samenow, Anumita Kaur and Maham Javaid contributed to this report.