Texas officials urged coastal residents Saturday to prepare for the imminent arrival of Beryl, a tropical storm that is expected to regain hurricane strength as it moves through the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
A hurricane warning has been issued for a stretch of the state’s coast from Baffin Bay, south of Corpus Christi, to Sargent, south of Houston.
Jack Beven, a specialist with the National Hurricane Center, said Beryl will make landfall somewhere between Brownsville and just north of Corpus Christi on Monday.
The first storm to strengthen into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic, Beryl caused at least 11 deaths as it passed through the Caribbean islands earlier this week. It then hit Mexico as a Category 2 hurricane, toppling trees but causing no injuries or deaths before weakening to a tropical storm as it passed through the Yucatan Peninsula.
Texas officials warned residents across the coast to prepare for possible flooding, heavy rain and winds as the storm approaches.
Some coastal towns have called for voluntary evacuations in low-lying areas prone to flooding, banned beach camping and urged tourists to remove their recreational vehicles from coastal parks.
Mitch Thames, a spokesman for Matagorda County, said Saturday that officials had issued a voluntary evacuation request for coastal areas of the county about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Houston to notify the large number of visitors to the area for the holiday weekend.
In Corpus Christi, officials asked visitors to cut their trips short and return home early if possible. Officials asked residents to secure their homes by boarding up windows if necessary and using sandbags to guard against possible flooding.
“We are taking the storm very seriously and we ask the community to take it very seriously as well,” Corpus Christi Fire Chief Brandon Wade said Friday night.
The hurricane center predicts it will be a strong Category 1 storm, but says that estimate is conservative. That could all change if Beryl stays above water longer than expected, the center warned.
The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are warm enough for early-season storms to intensify quickly, as has happened several times before.
“We shouldn’t be surprised if this intensifies rapidly before landfall and becomes a major hurricane,” said Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground and a former government hurricane meteorologist who tracks storms closely.
“Category 2 may be more likely, but we should not rule out a Category 3 possibility.”
Beryl, at full speed
Beven said Beryl was officially forecast to gain 17 to 23 mph (27 to 37 km/h) in speed in a single day. However, he noted that the storm had intensified more quickly than forecasters had reported earlier in the Caribbean.
Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, said hurricane center forecasters have been very accurate in predicting Beryl’s path so far.
Already three times in its week-long life, Beryl has gained 35 mph in speed in 24 hours or less, the official weather service definition of rapid intensification.
The storm accelerated from 80 to 115 mph (128 to 185 km/h) overnight from June 29 to June 30. On July 1, it jumped from 120 to 155 mph (193 to 249 km/h) in just 15 hours, according to hurricane center records.
Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University, used a different tracking system and said he counted eight different periods when Beryl rapidly intensified — something that happened only twice in the Atlantic in July.
Kerry Emanuel, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said there was “not much chance” that Beryl’s speed would increase from 35 mph in the Gulf of Mexico, but admitted it was a difficult thing to predict.
Beryl’s rapid growth into a formidable storm shows how much hot water the Atlantic and Caribbean are in for the remainder of the hurricane season, experts said.
Records shattered
The storm broke several records even before its major winds approached the island of Carriacou, Grenada on Monday.
Beryl set the record for the first Category 4 hurricane with winds of at least 130 mph (209 km/h) – the first Category 4 in June. It was also the first storm to rapidly intensify with winds reaching 63 mph (102 km/h) in 24 hours, going from a normal depression to a Category 4 in 48 hours.
Phil Klotzbach called Beryl a harbinger.
Forecasters had been warning months ago that this would be a tough year for hurricanes. Now they’re comparing it to the busy year of 1933 and the deadly year of 2005, when Katrina, Rita, Wilma and Dennis devastated everything in their path.
“This is the type of storm we’re expecting this year, these freak events that happen when and where they shouldn’t,” McNoldy warned.
Warm water acts as fuel for the thunderstorms and clouds that form hurricanes. The warmer the water and thus the air at the bottom of the storm, the greater the chance it will rise higher into the atmosphere and create deeper storms, says Kristen Corbosiero of the University at Albany.
“So when you get all that thermal energy, you can expect fireworks,” Masters added.
Atlantic waters have reached a record high since April 2023.
Kristen Corbosiero said scientists debate the exact effect of climate change on hurricanes, but they agree that it makes them more likely to intensify quickly and be more powerful, as Beryl did.
Kerry Emanuel, for his part, pointed out that the slowdown of the currents of the Atlantic Ocean, probably caused by climate change, could also contribute to the increase in water temperature.
The rise of the natural weather phenomenon La Niña, a slight cooling of the Pacific that is changing the climate globally, may also be to blame.