With fierce gusts and pouring rain, Tropical Storm Beryl made landfall in southeast Texas on Monday. It closed oil ports, knocked out electricity to over 2.5 million homes and businesses, and killed at least three people.
The storm killed eleven people in the Caribbean where it made landfall as a category 5 hurricane before coming ashore in Texas. It proceeded as a category 2 hurricane to the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico, where it briefly became a tropical storm before intensifying once more over the weekend to become a hurricane.
In two incidences on Monday, trees that fell on their homes in the Houston region killed a 53-year-old male and a 74-year-old woman. Local officials reported that a third individual perished in the water.
The US National Weather Service (NWS) reported that the storm made landfall close to Matagorda, a coastal town around 95 miles south of Houston, with sustained winds of 75 mph (120 km/h). The storm was traveling northwest at 10 mph as it reached Texas.
Much weaker than the category 5 monster that ripped a catastrophic path of destruction across sections of Mexico and the Caribbean last weekend, Beryl gradually deteriorated into a tropical storm and then a tropical depression. However, the storm’s strong winds and rainfall managed to topple hundreds of trees that were already precarious in the water-soaked ground and leave dozens of automobiles stranded on flooded roads.
In the state that produces the most US natural gas and oil, production sites were evacuated and oil-refining activities decreased.
There are still dangerous storm surges and a lot of rain falling in certain parts of Texas. Even as Beryl started to weaken, the NHC reported that “damaging winds are continuing along the coast, with strong winds moving inland.”
The Storm Prediction Center reported that a tornado watch was in effect for a region that is home to more than 7 million people. As the storm advances inland over eastern Texas, into the Mississippi Valley and then the Ohio Valley, it is predicted to deteriorate into a tropical storm and eventually to a depression.