Millions Without Power After Beryl Batters Houston (2024)

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Here’s the latest on the storm.

Here’s what to know:

• The forecast: Beryl, which made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane in Matagorda, Texas, had devolved to a tropical depression on Monday evening, with sustained winds of 35 m.p.h. The storm was expected to continue to produce flooding rains and the risk of tornadoes across portions of Eastern Texas, Western Louisiana and Arkansas. Here’s where the storm is going next.

• Four deaths in Houston: One of the four fatalities was a civilian employee of the Houston Police Department who drowned when his car became submerged in high water. Two people were killed when trees crashed onto their homes. And a fourth died in a house fire that officials said was believed to have been caused by lightning.

• The damage elsewhere: Beryl tore a deadly path across the Caribbean last week before crossing the Gulf of Mexico, killing at least 11 people as it flattened islands, inundated communities and became the first hurricane to reach Category 5 status this early in the season.

• Climate’s role: Researchers have found that climate change has increased the frequency of major hurricanes. It is also making hurricanes intensify faster and produce more rain with a higher storm surge. Beryl’s quick escalation to a major hurricane is a bad sign for the rest of the season.

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Facing lengthy repairs, a major utility considers mobile generators for key sites.

The company said it was looking into using mobile generation units to provide temporary power to places like cooling centers, health care facilities, police and fire stations, senior centers and educational centers.

“We are 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,” Lynnae Wilson, senior vice president for electric business at CenterPoint, said in a statement. “We understand how difficult it is to be without power for any amount of time, especially in the heat.”

The utility said it had begun assessing damage to its facilities and rerouting power to transmission lines that had not been damaged.

Once it has assessed the damage, CenterPoint said, it will publish estimates for how soon service can be substantially restored. Customers in the hardest-hit areas should prepare for an extended period without electricity, the company said.

“This will be a multiday restoration effort,” said Thomas Gleeson, the chairman of the state’s Public Utility Commission, discussing the widespread power outages. “It’s going to take a few days to get this restored.”

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The tiny Texas town where Beryl made landfall counts its blessings.

Matagorda, which lies between Galveston and Corpus Christi, was largely a ghost town on Monday, at a time of year when it would normally be bustling with visitors. Clay Cook, the president of the fire board and Ms. Cook’s husband, said that more than half of the full-time residents, out of a total of about 1,000, had heeded warnings and evacuated.

“That was very prudent, very good,” he said. “Very few people stayed behind.”

The local hotel, Cassady’s, suffered the most visible damage. The storm blew shingles off the roof, and it was missing metal pieces.

Ms. Cook said she got up at around 1:54 a.m. “I heard the wind,” she said, recounting how the screens in four of her doors flew away in the gale. Her three-bedroom condo, made out metal, was able to withstand the force. “It actually held on pretty well,” she said.

There were no reports of high water.

The eye of the storm passed through Matagorda around 4 a.m. The Cooks said that when that happened, it felt as though time was standing still.

“You went outside, and there was no wind,” Mr. Cook said. “Then the winds returned for another hour.”

One man in his 80s was taken to a hospital with injuries after he stepped out of his house in the middle of the night when the wind was heavy. “It blew the door open, and it knocked him down,” Ms. Cook said. “Otherwise, we heard nothing.”

Over at Stanley’s General Store, a generator kept the lights on. The store operator, Kelley Keys, said she could not keep up with the demand for gasoline, ice and water. Ms. Keys, who invested $48,000 in a FEMA trailer house built to withstand strong winds, said she felt safe inside but could feel the structure swaying. She rushed to the store in the morning, knowing that people would be needing supplies.

At the back of the line at the store, Luke Rawlings, 54, said that he was thankful that very few structures in the town were battered by the storm. His own barn-shaped condo survived as well. “This is just par for the course here,” Mr. Rawlings said. “Every summer, we know that hurricanes are coming.”

Whitmire said in a news conference that the civilian police employee had tried to call people from the department for help. He asked for a moment of silence during the news conference.

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A dashboard view of Houston, after the storm.

Close to downtown, the authorities had closed some highways and roads, after the water had gotten so high that the only way to navigate it would have been by boat.

Still, some drivers dared venture out, and many who did were forced to make a dangerous calculation: estimating the depth of waterlogged roads and then assessing whether their vehicle can travel safely through it.

Not everyone has done the math successfully.

Near Buffalo Bayou, northwest of downtown, police officers were patrolling on boats. At least one vehicle had been fished out.

Houston’s toads burst into song during the storm. Here’s why.

This species of toad is rotund, about the size of a tangerine, and speckled brown with a vanilla-colored belly. But you don’t see them as often as you hear them.

On summer nights around Houston, they chime in a competitive chorus. But it’s unusual to hear them during the day.

Beryl seems to have changed that, though. As the storm crossed the metro area on Monday morning, the call of the toads echoed from flooded street corners.

Most toad species breed in the early spring, said Paul Crump, a herpetologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. But given the right conditions, he said, the Gulf Coast toad can breed repeatedly throughout the summer, laying eggs in the temporary pools that form across the city during rainstorms.

The brisk air brought on by Beryl’s winds — unusual during Houston’s scorching summers — might have helped get the toads in the mood.

“They are breeding because the weather conditions, like the rain, cooler temperatures and barometric pressure drops, stimulate them to do so,” Mr. Crump said.

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As I cautiously venture out around Sugar Land, the damage appears to be largely limited to shredded trees, their limbs littering the roads, and an interruption in cell service.

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Power failures from hurricanes are projected to increase 50 percent in the coming decades.

In some areas of the United States, the risk of power outage following hurricanes could become 50 percent higher in the coming years because of climate change, according to a new analysis by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Electric Power Research Institute. In Harris County, the average person could expect to see their risk of outages almost double beginning in 2066, according to the study.

In Matagorda County, where Beryl made landfall, approximately 85 percent of customers experienced power outages. American Electric Power Texas, which is one of four power providers to Matagorda County, announced on Sunday that 2,700 company and contract personnel were stationed about 160 miles south of Matagorda County to coordinate a response effort to the storm.

Research shows that climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, is making hurricanes stronger and wetter, while pushing weaker storms in the Atlantic Ocean to intensify to faster.

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Here’s where Beryl is expected to go next.

The storm is producing flooding rainfall of three to eight inches, with up to 15 inches in some isolated areas. Because of the storm’s compact size, the heaviest rainfall was expected to remain fairly narrow. Where exactly the heaviest rain will fall depends on Beryl’s exact path. The storm should be almost, if not entirely, out of Texas by early Tuesday morning.

Tuesday: As the storm tracks across Arkansas, it most likely will have weakened even further, and it may have become a post-tropical storm by this point. This means it will be more like a typical storm system sweeping across the U.S. this time of the year.

The storm’s plume of tropical moisture could cause flash flooding from Arkansas to Indiana during the day, with two to four inches of rainfall expected and local maximums upward of eight inches possible.

Wednesday: The remnants of Beryl will continue across Indiana and bring rain to the region. There is much uncertainty about where the low pressure associated with Beryl will track, but there is a growing signal for a broad area to be impacted by the heavy rains. There is at least some risk of excessive rain from northern Indiana to New Hampshire.

Thursday and beyond: The remnants of Beryl will come together with other weather ingredients and could produce heavy rain and the potential for flash flooding in the Eastern Seaboard late this week.

Showers and storms could linger into the weekend for portions of the East, but forecasters with the Weather Prediction Center said rain amounts do not look as focused or heavy.

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