In brief: Houston’s heat will continue to build this week, likely peaking with triple-digit temperatures this weekend across most of the metro area. Today’s post also reviews a recent report by the National Weather Service on winds and other impacts from Hurricane Beryl.
Hurricane Beryl’s winds
On Tuesday the National Weather Service issued a summary of findings on Hurricane Beryl, which includes official measurements of maximum winds, rainfall, storm surge, and more. This is the best data we are likely to get regarding the local meteorological impacts from Beryl, which made landfall south of Houston a little more than a month ago.
Of most interest is the winds from Beryl, as they were the cause of power outages to about 90 percent of customers in the Greater Houston area. A few days after Beryl’s landfall, Space City Weather published a post that said a region with a competent electricity distribution system should not have experienced such widespread outages. The new data supports this view. The highest sustained winds across the vast majority of the Houston area were in the vicinity of 40 to 60 mph, with gusts in the 60 to 80 mph range.
For much of Houston, especially the eastern half of the metro area, these winds were less than experienced during Hurricane Ike, in 2008. For example, maximum sustained winds during Hurricane Ike at Hobby Airport, in the center of the city, were 75 mph. During Beryl, maximum sustained winds were 54 mph. These were different storms, with different tracks, but it seems clear that our electricity distribution grid 16 years after Hurricane Ike is no stronger than than before. It is possibly even more vulnerable.
Beryl was not a pleasant event. Hurricanes never are. But we almost certainly will experience much worse wind storms in the coming decades. Will our electricity distributors, CenterPoint, Entergy, and Texas-New Mexico, be ready?
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
By now, you should know the drill. For the rest of the week we’re going to see mostly sunny days with temperatures in the upper 90s. We’ll continue to see some spotty rain chances during the late morning and afternoon hours as the sea breeze pushes inland. If I’m being generous, I’ll say there’s a 20 percent chance of such showers near the coast, and perhaps a 10 percent chance inland of Interstate 10. Consider yourself fortunate if you get a splash of rain to help the trees and briefly cool down the air. Winds will be light in the morning, before blowing from the southeast at about 10 mph by the late afternoon hours. Overnight lows will only fall to about 80 degrees.
Saturday and Sunday
The temperature dial gets turned up higher for the weekend, with much of the area reaching 100 degrees. Rain chances also fall back to near zero, as high pressure strengthens and promotes sinking air. This probably will be the hottest stretch of summer—no guarantees, sorry—so let’s all get through this together. We’re about a month away from the time when we might realistically begin to hope for fall’s first front.
Next week
The overall pattern does not change much next week, at least as far as I can see. Temperatures may fall a few degrees, back into the upper 90s. But it’s still going to be hot and sunny, with warm and sultry nights. Rain chances look low.
Tropics
Ernesto is approaching hurricane strength as it lifts away from Puerto Rico. It may well become a major hurricane before seriously threating the island of Bermuda on Friday or Saturday. Elsewhere the tropics are blissfully quiet for mid-August, and look to remain so over the next week at least.
Picked up >1 inch of rain yesterday afternoon in Spring Branch. Much needed after over two weeks without a drop!
We had a short, very intense storm in Montrose yesterday around 2; I haven’t seen lightning like that in a while. And just like most summers in H Town, if you don’t like the weather, wait fifteen minutes. Sun was out in full force. Glad I hadn’t watered my plants!
Beryl has shown us that we should take Milton Friedman at his word. For profit corporations only responsibility is to return a decent profit to their shareholders. And, therefore, we should not leave critical infrastructure to unregulated, for profit, companies. They cannot be depended upon to maintain critical infrastructure for our society. We need to go back to well regulated, public utilities that are responsible to the communities they serve.
So, my assumption was right. Since the beginning I have been trying to convince people that Beryl was just a cat 1 when it hit us. Almost nobody believes it was just a cat 1 in my area. Other than the immediate coast there was not much in the way of structural damage further inland other than the places that had trees fall on them. The tree damage was excessive but that is because most of our region picked up 8 inches of rain all at once which softened the ground making it easier for the trees to topple over. Our trees have also been weakened by the extreme weather we’ve had over the past several years. The strongest windgust observed in our region was 92 mph in Sargent. That is less than the “sustained” winds of 96 mph in a cat 2. We are very lucky it didn’t strengthen to a 2 or 3. The structural damage to homes and businesses would have been far greater across our region.
This new confirmation further proves my point that all hurricanes are bad news even the weaker ones especially if they hit you directly. Most people only ever hear about the worst cat 4 and 5s so people generally disregard the weaker ones. This is why everyone was caught off guard by Beryl because people don’t realize how bad even a cat 1 can be. At the end of the day Beryl was a learning lesson for us. If it is called a hurricane than there is going to be consequences involved. We experienced some of the worst a cat 1 has to offer. Unfortunately our chances for another Carla type hurricane are going up so it’s only a matter of time before we see one like Carla again and worse.
CenterPoint is regulated to the extent that the company is guaranteed a hefty profit that is used to overpay company executives and shareholders. However, it is not regulated in a way that is beneficial to consumers. Deregulated industries are even worse — there is no mandate that they be consumer friendly. Commercial airlines are a good example of deregulation not being helpful to their long-suffering customers.
We all like to criticize the service, but customers wanted to fly at the lowest cost possible. Deregulation allowed that objective to be realized while improving on the safety record. Not perfect, but I think most folks prefer today’s environment.
“Transmission” and “Distribution” issues have to be considered separately. “Transmission”, most likely, has issues with code and lack of incentives to innovate (financial, regulatory, etc.). Definitely, there are solutions to monitor remotely the infrastructure, to analyze subsidence by satellite imagery, powerful simulation and analysis tools, etc. Most of the issues with lattice towers failing could be eliminated, specially when talking about sustained wind gusts under 60 mph. “Distribution” may be more complex, as indicated in a previous post by the authors, given the growth Houston is experiencing. Yet, repairs should be easier or at least impacting a lower number of customers after 24h-48h.
I didn’t think the wind from beryl was as bad as was being said. I’m not far from hobby and I had worse winds almost any given day living in Wyoming or driving through Colorado.
I fully understand the frustration and anger toward Centerpoint and other electrical distribution companies, but in spite of your comparison to Ike, I think we are missing a point. For whatever reason, Beryl’s winds were more destructive. I’d like you to post the tons of debris created by both storms as I think this is a better measure of impact.
Agreed. Beryl’s winds were too destructive for the category Beryl was classified as. They were amped up somehow at the micro level. There’s an unknown factor going on here somewhere.
Looks like an opportunity to create a new “Damage Scale” rather than relying solely on windspeed. If SCW can popularize wet bulb temperature over heat index, surely we can revise this as well.
I concur. I have lived here since 1967 and have NOT experienced the winds from a Cat 1 like this one. trees and fences down over, as well as power. I had read that since it intensified after hitting land, that somehow made it a worse storm than intensifying before landfall? Idk. But agree with Dan, some factor(s) missing.
I think they addressed it earlier, and it’s fairly straightforward. We had two weeks of excessive rain prior to this, and the ground was wet. Wet clay is weaker than dry clay, so the trees were more vulnerable than normal.
You can see that in how most trees came down. They didn’t break, they fell over at the roots, usually pulling up a disc of clay with them.
I’m curious about this aspect too. It’s good to know the data of the wind field and duration etc… but THERE WERE SO MANY DOWNED TREES. What is the comparison of fence, tree, roof damage with Beryl compared to Ike or other storms? Any interpretation or explanations?
The Derecho storm in May weakened a lot of trees. Beryl finished the off. There were no major storms before Ike hit.
In my neighborhood near Champions, there were a lot of downed trees but it was definitely worse after Ike. Yet our power was out for 6 days this time compared to 3 days after Ike. They used to trim the trees near the power lines in our neighborhood every year and also check the utility poles and adjust/replace them when necessary. I haven’t seen them do that for maybe 10 years. I have not seen a news story on whether or not Centerpoint has reduced its tree-trimming & utility pole inspection/replacement compared to the past.
I live close to Hobby. The destruction was worse during Ike here, but not by too much. I cant rely much on radars, etc. as I do feet on the ground. As for CenterPoint et al, its all business. Perhaps some at the top of that corporation has shares in Generac and what a better way than to raise your stock as to not restore power to folks timely. I know those generator businesses received a lot of business. Scammers never let opportunities go to waste. Follow the money.
That’s a really good point.
Do you think the drought, freezes the last couple years, and extremely hot summer last year weakened trees to where they were more vulnerable to a moderate wind event like Beryl?
Absolutely. Droughts especially can leave trees more vulnerable to diseases and it weakens the root system underground which is what helps hold trees up. This makes it easier for trees to topple over and be broken halfway up the trunk. I also think the excessive rain we saw from Beryl also made it easier for the trees to be uprooted. The ground was soft like quicksand after all that rain.
re: Wind causing outages – Centerpoint takes perverse & evil joy in blaming homeowners who wouldn’t let them on their property to trim trees which later fell onto power lines. Hasn’t anyone asked Centerpoint to show how many times this happened and was the direct cause of outage to an area? Which specific homeowners were asked, on what days & times, what was the homeowners response, and how many times did you follow up or escalate? Was the homeowner even home when you asked? Did the homeowner ask you to come back on a different day and you chose not to? We’re supposed to take Centerpoint’s word for it that we’re to blame for everything that happened because, as the new saying goes, the customer is always wrong.
I lost power long before the winds reached the point that they were damaging trees.
I have shown the CP trimmers the lines in my backyard twice this spring to try and get them to cut out the tangled mess of limbs (my neighbor’s trees) against the lines. Both times the trimmer looked and said, “no, those are ok, they’re fine.” Go figure
The city of Houston got “right front quadded” with eye passage from a category 1 Hurricane. It would be nauseating to think if a 4 or a 5 in the same location would have popped us? Life in this city would never be the same. Galveston and all the Bayside communities, Kemah ,Seabrook Johnson space Center, would’ve been blasted clean.
Heartening to realize that it could have been so much worse but wasn’t ,also its disheartening to see that a 80 mph Hurricane can shut the city down as it did.
Maybe the winds at Hobby were not as bad as Ike, but tree damage in Brazoria was tremendous and worse than Ike.
Was out of state during storm Brazoria County was so damaged. How much of last years drought contributed to damage ( made tress less healthy) due to fallen trees?
The current metro Houston population is around 6.8 million people. In 2008 the population was 4.7 million people . Thats a 45% increase. Spending of infrastructure and maintenance have not kept up.
Plus in my estimation the population in 2008 was much more self sufficient and less dependent on the Internet and electricity, and certainly didn’t live on social media 24×7.
We may not have lived on social media, in 2008, but even back then we liked having our AC during the hot and humid days and months..When Ike happened, it was already mid Sept..A time when modest cool fronts were already rolling in..Even though it was still hot enough to want AC, I don’t remember any day, post Ike, being in the high 90s or 100(real temperature)..
Hot is hot, whether it’s now or 16 years ago..People didn’t have thicker skins or were more self sufficient back then..People were similar in dealing with hot weather as they are now..
With Beryl, everybody was justified in complaining…Once the rains went away, before power was restored in many homes, people were having to deal with high 90s-100 degree heat with no power, no AC…
Just because someone owns and can use a full home or portable generator doesn’t mean they are the preparedness gods, who have a right to judge the rest of us..
Sorry to be frying you with my comment..I’m just sick and tired of the ableism in our society…I’m on a fixed income and cannot afford 12-18K for a full home generator..Even with our city offering to reimburse 5K..We also don’t have the stamina and money to hunt down gas every day post hurricane to fuel a portable generator ..
My priority right now is to spend my only savings on addressing our two trees, so that my home stands safer in the next hurricane, whether or not I’m sweating my tush off inside my home..
not so much about “social media 24×7” but about how we depend on our utilities.
back in Ike, lots of people had POTS lines into their home (normal land line service) – almost indestructible and depends on very few things and very low power.
fast forward to Uri and derecho and Beryl: most folks have given up their landline for cellular … and the remaining landlines are being converted from POTS to VoIP.
VoIP requires internet, which itself requires a great deal of power in lots of stops along the way. the same internet that was down at the provider end, even if customers had power for it at home.
cell towers were down too. folks were entirely cut off from power restoration status and loved ones, not just social media.
If you follow Nextdoor, you saw many, many complaints about the post Beryl tree trimming campaign. Pictures included. Go figure. You lost power because live wires shorted from trees hitting. Get the trees away from the wires. For the URBAN CORE, the derecho was worse…albeit having a much smaller wind field. The wind went from nothing to something in just a few minutes.
I was thinking the same thing. I don’t think it was so much a problem with the grid as much as it was the thousands of trees and tree limbs that fell on all the lines across the region which usually doesn’t happen. You could have the best quality grid in the world but if 150 thousand trees and branches fall on all the lines than there is going to be widespread power outages regardless. And it takes a long time for the line men to clear all those downed lines all over the region.
I agree, but I still believe our grid is feeble nevertheless…We should have never froze for as long as we did during the freeze…
That was the power plants. Different problem and procedure. Freeze protection. Every plant guy knows this. Management not so much?
The biggest difference between Ike and Beryl was the duration of time the region was whipped by the winds. Ike moved through for the most part east of Houston and pushed through quicker. Beryls track meant more time over the Houston metro. It’s more than just peak winds it’s how long you have to endure those winds…
I suspect that Centerpoint got lax on tree cutting. There are always people screaming at them and filing lawsuits about cutting the trees away from the electric lines.
And, Centerpoint needs to replace wooden poles with concrete poles. I know that they do not look as good but, the concrete poles are way stronger.
And, if electricity is important to you, get a whole house generator. Unfortunately, solar systems with batteries are still 3X the cost of a generator, but maybe someday.
Beryl happened just days after we moved away from Houston (and Texas). Events like Beryl and the winter freeze a few years ago just point to how bad the infrastructure is getting. Lack of investment and failure to properly oversee the providers are to blame. It’s been really pleasant in our new home to drive on streets that aren’t riddled with potholes and where people don’t feel like they need to buy generators because the power is so unreliable.
Hi @John … curiosity on my part, but where is “away from Houston and Texas”?? 👍
I think the events/circumstances leading up to Beryl are under-appreciated. Many of the trees in my area had semi-hollow cores — my guess is they had been significantly weakened by the major and minor freezes in prior winters. Additionally, the ground was saturated when Beryl came through. It is irrelevant what Cat a hurricane is if the tree or limb next to the power line falls when the sustained winds hit 55 mph.