Texas endures as Beryl passes through

(CN) — After claiming at least three lives in southeast Texas, Tropical Storm Beryl continued its march toward the northeast Monday, leaving in its wake flooded roadways, downed trees and millions without power.

The storm, which formed June 28, is the first hurricane of the Atlantic hurricane season. Its rapid intensification to category 5 with maximum sustained winds of 165 miles per hour made it the first storm of its kind to form in June — and the strongest storm ever recorded in July.

The early formation and intensity have been attributed to abnormally warm ocean temperatures, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In two separate incidents, trees fell on houses and claimed the lives of a man who was sheltering with his family in northeast Harris County and an elderly woman in north Houston, officials confirmed. A third person died in a house fire in the southern part of the city, Houston fire chief Samuel Peña said.

The storm entered the state as a Category 1 hurricane around 4 a.m. on Monday near Matagorda, Texas. By midday it was downgraded to a tropical storm with sustained wind speeds of 60 mph and moving to the northeast at a speed of 13 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Houston — Texas’s largest city and no stranger to intense weather — got battered by Beryl as the storm’s eye passed just 20 miles outside the city center. Mayor John Whitmire said the city was in rescue mode and urged people to stay inside.

Whitmire said that the city received over 10 inches of rain, causing bayous to swell to their banks and roads to flood.

Electricity provider CenterPoint Energy has tracked over 6,000 current outages as of 1:30 p.m. on Monday, affecting over 2 million customers.

“All we need to worry about now is protecting lives,” Whitmire said during a news briefing. “We have been in contact with the county judge, the state government and the White House has reached out offering assistance, so it is all hands on deck.”

While much of Houston and surrounding communities will get relief from the rain by Tuesday morning, flooding — like that of upstream rivers — remains a major concern, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who is serving as acting governor while Governor Greg Abbott is away on an economic partnership meeting abroad, told The Weather Channel.

“This is not like a one-day event,” Patrick said. “And in northeast Texas, people will have to be aware, They will not have the heavy winds like we had in the Houston area, but they will have a lot of rain.”

Patrick issued a disaster declaration for 81 counties in the state on Sunday, allowing them to access recourses needed to respond to the storm.

Beryl is expected to bring rain to Arkansas Tuesday morning before delivering inches of rain to other states along the Mississippi River. The National Weather Service has placed much of northern Arkansas, southeastern Missouri and southern Indiana on flood watch as the storm’s remnants begin to dissipate.

Before making its way to Texas, Beryl left a path of death and destruction in the Caribbean. Three fatalities have been reported in Grenada, Jamaica. An additional three people were reported dead in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and one person in Venezuela.

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