Texas bracing for approaching Beryl as the storm is set to intensify
A stretch of the Texas coast is now under hurricane and storm surge alerts as Beryl is forecast to strengthen in the Gulf of Mexico Sunday, ahead of a Monday morning landfall
Texas is on high alert as Beryl gets closer to the coast Sunday, with forecasters expecting it to strengthen into a hurricane once more.
As a result, forecasters have extended hurricane warnings and watches along the coastline of Texas.
Despite its current struggle with dry air and wind shear, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) expects Beryl to regain hurricane strength sometime on Sunday, before making landfall south of Houston on Monday morning.
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Very warm waters in the Gulf will likely allow the system to regain some strength and organization before it reaches the Texas coast.
A hurricane warning and a storm surge warning are both in effect for the Texas coast from Baffin Bay northward to Sargent. This includes the city of Corpus Christi. A tropical storm warning is in effect farther north, including the cities of Houston and Galveston.
Damaging winds, flooding rain that could reach up to 380 mm in localized spots and life-threatening storm surge flooding along the coast are possible as Beryl moves inland early this week. Tornadoes are also possible around the Houston metropolitan area as the storm makes landfall.
After landfall, it’s likely that the ridge of high pressure over the southeastern U.S. will steer Beryl’s remnants over the region.
It’s tough to say what, if any, impacts the storm’s remnants could have on Canada since the potential is more than a week out. However, recent model updates show that the remnants of Beryl are expected to remain fairly organized long after landfall, thanks to the upper-level trough.
It could bring heavy rain across southern Ontario and into southern Quebec, but uncertainty remains on where the highest totals will fall.
Beryl’s historic run
Beryl is a historic storm. Over the past couple of days, the system has set records for:
the earliest Category 5 hurricane on record, beating 2005’s Hurricane Emily
the earliest Category 4 hurricane on record, beating 2005’s Hurricane Dennis
the earliest hurricane so far east in the tropical Atlantic on record
This is also the first time since 1966 we’ve seen a major hurricane before the July 4th holiday.
Experts largely agree that we’re in for a very active Atlantic hurricane season in the weeks and months to come. Sea surface temperatures throughout the Atlantic are running several degrees hotter than normal, closer to what you’d expect in September than the end of June.
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These abnormally hot waters will combine with the lower wind shear brought on by a developing La Niña in the eastern Pacific to foster extremely favourable conditions for tropical cyclone development through the peak of the season this fall.
The latest seasonal outlooks call for as many as two-dozen named storms, which is far more than the 14 tropical storms we’d see during a typical Atlantic hurricane season.
Thumbnail courtesy of NOAA.
Stay with The Weather Network for all the latest on this busy hurricane season.
