Hurricane Beryl slams into Texas coast

Officials order evacuations in beach towns in the storm’s path but fear not enough people have left.

Hurricane Beryl has hit the coast of Texas, where major oil ports have closed, flights have been cancelled and some residents of beach towns have evacuated from their homes.

The hurricane made landfall on Monday in the town of Matagorda with winds of 80 miles per hour (130 kilometres per hour), said the United States National Hurricane Center (NHC).

Registered as a Category 1 storm, the hurricane is expected to cause “considerable flash and urban flooding” but will likely weaken to a tropical storm on Monday and to a tropical depression on Tuesday, according to the NHC.

Before reaching Texas, Beryl had swept through Jamaica, Grenada, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, at times reaching Category 5 wind strengths, the highest level. It toppled buildings and power lines and killed at least 11 people.

The storm weakened after cutting through the Caribbean but resurged into a Category 1 hurricane as it crossed the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

‘Deadly storm’

Acting Texas Governor Dan Patrick on Sunday declared 120 counties in the state to be disaster areas, warning that Beryl “will be a deadly storm for people who are directly in that path”.

As the storm approached, residents hurried to board up windows and stock up on fuel. School systems – including the state’s largest in Houston – said they would close while airlines cancelled more than 1,300 flights and officials ordered a smattering of evacuations in beach towns.

Patrick expressed concern that not enough residents and vacationers in Beryl’s path heeded the warnings to leave.

“One of the things that kind of trigger our concern a little bit, we’ve looked at all of the roads leaving the coast and the maps are still green,” he said. “So we don’t see many people leaving.”

Houston Mayor John Whitmire, whose residents are under tornado alert, said: “We have to take Beryl very, very seriously. Our worst enemy is complacency.”

Houston residents should know “the conditions that you go to sleep under tonight will not be the same that you wake up to in the morning,” he said.

Beryl is the first hurricane since NHC records began to reach the Category 4 level in June and the earliest to hit Category 5 in July.

It is rare for such a powerful storm to form this early in the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from early June to late November.

Scientists said climate change likely plays a role in the rapid intensification of storms such as Beryl because there is more energy in a warmer ocean for them to feed on.