Beryl forecast to bring heavy rain, winds into Missouri on Tuesday

A vehicle is stranded in high waters on a flooded highway Monday in Houston after Beryl came ashore in Texas as a hurricane and dumped heavy rains along the coast.

Juan A. Lozano ~ Associated Press

HOUSTON — Tropical Storm Beryl slammed into Texas on Monday, knocking out power to nearly 3 million homes and businesses and unleashing heavy rains that prompted dozens of high-water rescues. The fast-moving tempest threatened to carve a harsh path over several more states in coming days.

Beryl is forecast to bring more strong rain and winds into additional states over the coming days. One of those, Missouri, was already dealing with a wet summer. Heavy rains unrelated to the storm prompted several water rescues around Columbia, where rivers and creeks were already high ahead of Beryl’s expected arrival Tuesday.

Beryl is forecast to move from eastern Texas northeastward across Arkansas and Missouri on Tuesday, into the Lower Ohio Valley on Tuesday night and into the Lower Great Lakes on Wednesday, the National Weather Service said Monday afternoon. Wind speeds associated with Beryl will weaken as it moves farther from the Gulf of Mexico, but the storm will continue to produce heavy rain as it moves northeastward, according the the NWS.

Widespread heavy rains are likely along and to the northeast of the path of Beryl over the next two days, with rainfall totals of 2 to 5 inches from far northeast Texas, across large section of Arkansas, Southeast Missouri, Central to Southern Illinois, Indiana, northwest Ohio into the southern portions of Michigan, the NWS said. These amounts are in addition to the 5 to 10-plus inches of rains that have fallen along the path of Beryl as it pushed inland Monday along the central Texas Gulf Coast. Flood watches are in effect along the path of Beryl from eastern Texas and into Southern Illinois, affecting more than 15 million people.

Texas state and local officials warned it could take several days to restore power after Beryl came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane and toppled 10 transmission lines and knocked down trees that took down power lines.

Within hours, Beryl had weakened into a tropical storm, far less powerful than the Category 5 behemoth that tore a deadly path of destruction through parts of Mexico and the Caribbean last weekend. But the winds and rains of the fast-moving storm were still powerful enough to knock down hundreds of trees that had already been teetering in water-saturated earth, and strand dozens of cars on flooded roadways.

Desi Littleton assesses damages after a tree fell on his home after Hurricane Beryl hit the Texas coast Monday in Bay City, Texas.

Eric Gay ~ Associated Press

As it moved inland, the storm still threatened to spawn tornadoes.

“We’re not past any difficult conditions,” said Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is acting governor while Gov. Greg Abbott is out of the country, warning it would be a ”multiple day process to get power restored.”

Houston took a hard hit as CenterPoint Energy reported more than 2 million homes and businesses without power in and around the nation’s fourth-largest city. Patrick said the company was bringing in thousands of additional workers to restore power, with top priority for places such as nursing homes and assisted living centers.

At least two people were killed when trees fell on homes, and the National Hurricane Center said damaging winds and flash flooding would continue as Beryl pushes inland. A third person, a civilian employee of the Houston Police Department, was killed when he was trapped in flood waters under a highway overpass, Houston Mayor John Whitmire said. There were no immediate reports of widespread structural damage, however.

The loss of power was an all-too familiar experience for Houston: Powerful storms had just ripped through the area in May, killing eight people, leaving nearly 1 million without power and flooding numerous streets.

Residents without power after Beryl were doing their best.

“We haven’t really slept,” said Eva Costancio as she gazed at a large tree that had fallen across electric lines in her neighborhood in the Houston suburb of Rosenberg. Costancio, 67, said she had already been without power for several hours and worried that food in her refrigerator would be spoiled.

“We are struggling to have food and losing that food would be difficult,” she said.

Houston and Harris County officials said power crews would be sent into the area to restore service as quickly as possible, an urgent priority for homes also left without air conditioning in the middle of summer. Temperatures, which had decreased slightly with the storm, were expected to reach back into the 90s as early as Tuesday. The National Weather Service issued a heat advisory that said the area heat index could reach 105 degrees.

The state will be ready to open cooling centers as well as food and water distribution centers, said Nim Kidd, chief of state emergency operations.

Beryl’s rains pounded Houston and other areas of the coast Monday, reclosing streets in neighborhoods that had already been washed out by previous storms. Television stations Monday broadcast the dramatic rescue of a man who had climbed to the roof of his pickup truck after it got trapped in fast-flowing waters. Emergency crews used an extension ladder from a fire truck to drop him a life preserver and a tether before moving him to dry land.

Houston officials reported at least 25 water rescues by Monday afternoon, mostly for people with vehicles stuck in floodwaters.

“First responders are putting their lives at risk. That’s what they’re trained for. It’s working,” Houston Mayor John Whitmire said.

Javier Mejia was one of about 20 people who gathered near the pickup truck rescue site to take pictures of other submerged vehicles sitting on the flooded highway.

“If you don’t have a way through, you’re going to get stuck like that,” Mejia said.

Having experienced previous storms in Houston, Mejia stocked up on food and water before Beryl hit, but forgot gas for his portable generator. He planned to spend the day looking for some.

“I don’t want it to go bad," he said of the food, adding that if he can’t find gas, “We can just fire up the grill.”

Many streets and neighborhoods throughout Houston were littered with fallen branches and other debris. The buzz of chain saws filled the air Monday afternoon as residents set to work chopping up knocked-down trees and big branches that had blocked streets and sidewalks.

Patrick warned that flooding could last for days as rain continued to fall on already saturated ground.

“This is not a one-day event,” he said.

President Joe Biden was getting regular updates on the storm after it made landfall, the White House said. The U.S. Coast Guard and Federal Emergency Management Agency had prepared search and rescue teams, and FEMA collected bottled water, meals, tarps and electric generators in case they are needed.

Several companies with refineries or industrial plants in the area reported that the power disruptions necessitated the flaring of gases at the facilities.

Marathon Petroleum Corp. said it conducted a “safe combustion of excess gases” at its Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, but did not provide information on the amount of gas flared or how long it would continue. Formosa Plastics Corp. and Freeport LNG also reported flaring related to Beryl, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Companies have 24 hours to share emissions data after the flaring stops, a representative from the TCEQ said in an email.

The earliest storm to develop into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic, Beryl caused at least 11 deaths as it passed through the Caribbean on its way to Texas. The storm ripped off doors, windows and roofs with devastating winds and storm surge fueled by the Atlantic’s record warmth.

Three times during the week, Beryl gained 35 mph in wind speed in 24 hours or less, the official weather service definition of rapid intensification.

Beryl’s explosive growth into an unprecedented early whopper of a storm indicates the hot water of the Atlantic and Caribbean and what the Atlantic hurricane belt can expect for the rest of the storm season, experts said. In Jamaica, officials said Monday that island residents will have to contend with food shortages after Beryl destroyed more than $6.4 million in crops and supporting infrastructure.

In Louisiana, heavy bands of rain were expected all day Monday and “the risk is going to be for that heavy rainfall and potential for flash flooding,” National Weather Service meteorologist Donald Jones said in a Monday morning Facebook Live briefing.

The weather service in Shreveport issued tornado warnings across northwest Louisiana. The agency confirmed on social media that multiple tornadoes had been spotted in that corner of the state. Information on whether those weather events have caused any significant damage was not immediately available.