North Texas will see about an inch of rain and winds between 30 and 35 miles per hour as Tropical Storm Beryl makes its way northeast from the coast, according to the National Weather Service.
Beryl made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane around 4 a.m. Monday morning, but as of about 10 a.m., the National Weather Service downgraded it to a tropical storm, said Hunter Reeves, a meteorologist with the NWS in Fort Worth. That means wind speeds have dropped below the 74 miles per hour threshold to be classified as a hurricane.
“Tropical storms don't really like land all too much,” Reeves said. “They lose a lot of their power or their energy once they get over land because they need warm ocean water to thrive. And that's why you typically see the storms that kind of weaken well before they make it up this far north, because there's several hundred miles of land from the Houston-Galveston coast all the way up to here.”
The storm will graze the easternmost counties of North Texas — like Hunt, Rockwall and Kaufman — and will likely bring between 4 and 7 inches of rain and 40-45 mile-per-hour winds, he said. The moderate-to-heavy rain will last through Monday night and begin to fade out Tuesday morning.
Beryl knocked out power for more than 2.1 million customers in the Houston area, according to CenterPoint energy’s online outage tracker. Two deaths have been reported as of 10 a.m. Monday.
Dallas Fort Worth International and Love Field airports both reported higher-than-average delays and cancelations related to storm conditions Monday.
10am CDT Key Messages for #TropicalStorm #Beryl: Life threatening storm surge, damaging wind gusts and considerable flash flooding continue across portions of southeast #Texas. See https://t.co/tW4KeGe9uJ and https://t.co/SiZo8oA90V for more info and the latest updates pic.twitter.com/lzfmaN3Cmt
— National Hurricane Center (@NHC_Atlantic) July 8, 2024
North Texas first responders have been deployed across the state to contribute to Beryl recovery efforts.
A crew of seven firefighters from Cedar Hill, DeSoto and Duncanville will help evacuate buildings and provide medical care for the most vulnerable residents hit by the storm, including shelters and nursing homes, said Rafael Reyes, interim fire chief for the Cedar Hill Fire Department.
Firefighters will deploy Cedar Hill’s Ambus, an ambulance bus that can accommodate up to 18 patients on stretchers and five on wheelchairs. It has served as a resource for statewide use during natural disasters like wildfires and Hurricane Harvey.
The Ambus crew was preparing to leave College Station as of Monday afternoon, Reyes said. Firefighters could be gone for up to two weeks, but he said it’s likely they could return earlier due to the weakening storm.
“We're very fortunate that we get to partake in those types of deployment,” Reyes said. “We're also really fortunate that we have a mayor and city council and senior officials with city management that allow for us to partake in these types of situations. It makes my firefighters better, well-rounded firefighters in the long run, and it allows us to help other Texans at the same time.”
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