Beryl from space

The wife and I have lived in and around Houston off and on for about 40 years. We survived many hurricanes during those years: Alicia, Allison, Ike, Rita, and several other not-so-deadly or expensive, but annoying, storms. We retired from working and left Houston in early  2017.

That summer, a Cat 4 Hurricane Harvey flooded most of Houston killing almost 70 people. I remember, we had just moved to the RGV (Rio Grande Valley). Harvey came up from the south and sat offshore about 100 miles east of Brownsville for several hours, as if it was considering whether or not to fuck with us. It wasn't all that huge of a storm yet. 

We went to bed nervously, hoping the storm wouldn't head for us overnight and we'd wake up and might not be able to flee (they close the bridge if sustained winds reach 45mph). When we woke the next morning, the storm was moving to the north, thank goodness. Rockport eventually got flattened and flooded, and then the storm went back out to sea, strengthened some more and then drifted over to Galveston. It hit with an 8'-12' storm surge, and dumped around 60" of rain on the Houston area. So glad we had moved six months before Harvey hit. That's called dumb luck.

 

Beryl Makes Landfall in Texas

After tearing through the Caribbean and the Yucatan Peninsula, Hurricane Beryl swept ashore over the Gulf Coast of Texas on July 8, 2024. The Category 1 storm had sustained winds of up to 80 miles (129 kilometers) per hour at landfall and brought high gusts and heavy rain to the Houston area.

This image (top of page) shows Beryl at 7:43 a.m. Central Daylight Time (12:43 Universal Time) on July 8, about 3 hours after making landfall near Matagorda, Texas. As it moved north toward Houston, Beryl dumped 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20 centimeters) of rain over the metro area. Local authorities reported flooding along roads, downed trees, and power outages. 

This GeoColor image (above) was captured by the ABI (Advanced Baseline Imager) on the GOES-16 (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-16). GeoColor images show natural color reflectance during the daytime and multi-spectral infrared bands at night. The satellite is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which includes the National Weather Service. NASA helps develop and launch the GOES series of satellites, which observe Earth from about 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the equator.

(would have been an image inserted here, can be found here)

Beryl formed in the Atlantic Ocean on June 28 before explosively intensifying into a major hurricane. Rapid intensification occurs when wind speeds increase by at least 35 miles (56 kilometers) per hour within 24 hours. Between the afternoon of June 29 and the morning of June 30, Beryl’s winds increased by 65 miles per hour to become an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 hurricane. 

This explosive strengthening was fueled, in part, by warm ocean temperatures. Across the Northern Hemisphere, ocean temperatures for the January-April period averaged 2.12 degrees Fahrenheit (1.18 degrees Celsius) above normal, according to NOAA. Despite the waning El Niño, temperatures at the sea surface and at deeper depths are still above average in many places, according to Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

After making landfall on Carriacou Island in the Caribbean on July 1, Beryl continued to strengthen. On July 2, the storm became the earliest Category 5 hurricane observed in the Atlantic basin in NOAA’s record. An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took the photo above on July 2, as Beryl churned through the Caribbean Sea.

Beryl was downgraded to a tropical storm a few hours after making landfall on July 8, but as of noon local time in eastern Texas, hazardous winds and flooding rain continued to batter the region. Over 2.6 million people were without power in the state, according to PowerOutage.us.

Original.

Are hurricanes getting stronger? Yes.