Tropical Storm Beryl Special Update for July 7th
Beryl is on final approach to the central Texas coastline, and will likely make landfall as a Category 1 hurricane early Monday morning.
The saga of Beryl is finally nearing its end. As of the 5 p.m. Sunday NHC advisory, Tropical Storm Beryl has maximum sustained winds of 65 mph, moving north-northwest at 10 mph. With the storm centered only a little more than 100 miles south of Matagorda Bay, Texas, Beryl will make its final landfall on the central Texas coastline in the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning.
Beryl has struggled under the influence of dry air over the last 36 hours, with only modest restrengthening noted through Sunday afternoon. Deep convection is rotating around Beryl’s center of circulation, though that dry air is keeping the convection a bit on the anemic side, pulsing and fading by turns. This is good news, because while intensification is likely in its remaining time over water and Beryl will likely be a Category 1 hurricane by the time it reaches land, it has run out of time to intensify back to a stronger storm than that.
Look for a landfall intensity in the 70-90 mph range near or just east of Matagorda Bay. This means that Beryl’s wind impacts will be more measured, with tropical-storm-force wind gusts likely extending from Corpus Christi to Houston and inland towards College Station, and a smaller area of hurricane-force wind gusts along and east of Matagorda Bay. Hurricane Warnings are in effect for most of the central and east-central Texas coast.
![[Image of WPC Flash Flooding/Excessive Rainfall Outlook]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F31c780cc-61aa-4c3c-8df2-fa98de5d5630_1090x692.gif "[Image of WPC Flash Flooding/Excessive Rainfall Outlook]")
The biggest impacts of Beryl on Texas will likely be from rain and surge. Unlike Allison and Harvey, Beryl will continue moving across east Texas on Monday, rather than stalling out. Thus, while Beryl’s rainfall impacts on eastern and coastal Texas will be significant, especially as many of these areas have already seen heavy rainfall in the last few months, it will not be a true worst-case scenario. Nevertheless, given the expectation of 4-8” of rain through Tuesday, there is a risk of flash flooding and river flooding across eastern Texas, including Houston. Heavy rainfall will also continue north into the Arkansas Delta and Midwestern U.S. on Tuesday and Wednesday.
![[Image of cumulative wind history]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8c0d2d3f-c4fc-4095-8600-f57009b13a18_897x736.png "[Image of cumulative wind history]")
With Beryl’s windfield rather broad over the weekend, an expansive region of storm surge is expected along and east of Matagorda Bay east to the Texas/Louisiana border, with Storm Surge Warnings extending south to Corpus Christi. This surge will likely be in the 3-5’ range per NHC modeling, which will exceed what was seen a few weeks ago in the region from Tropical Storm Alberto. Local geography could drive the highest surge values up to 6-7’, particularly just east of Matagorda Bay. Finally, there is the potential for some tornadoes tomorrow in Beryl’s eastern outer bands, particularly in far eastern Texas and western Louisiana.
Overall, Beryl’s impacts will be serious across coastal and eastern Texas, comparable to Hurricane Claudette (2003) or Hurricane Nicholas (2022). I’ll be back with landfall coverage in tomorrow morning’s bulletin.