In brief: The National Hurricane Center released their post-storm report on Hurricane Beryl late last week, bumping its landfall intensity in Texas from 80 mph to 90 mph. The report also features a number of nuggets of information, statistics, and images. This post summarizes some of the highlights.
Hard to believe it’s been over 6 months now since Hurricane Beryl thrashed the Houston area. As is customary, the National Hurricane Center released their post-storm analysis on Beryl late last week, and there were some notable changes to the storm’s history. It is important to be clear that this is a common thing. When the storm is hitting, forecasters are consuming so much data and issuing constant updates that they don’t always have a chance to lock down all the finer details of the storm. In the postseason, there is the the luxury of being able to scrutinize all available data to make an objective determination of a storm’s data points. National Hurricane Center forecasters do this with every storm.
Beryl was a strong category 1 storm
While Hurricane Beryl was presumed to have a landfall intensity of 80 mph when it came ashore in Texas, the postseason review determined that this was too low. Beryl got an upgrade to a strong category 1 storm, with 90 mph maximum sustained winds at landfall. This is interesting, and it makes the comparisons to Ike somewhat more relevant in a data sense.
Ike came ashore as a weakening category 2 storm with 110 mph maximum sustained winds. Beryl came ashore as a strengthening category 1 storm, having rapidly intensified from a 60 mph tropical storm to a 90 mph hurricane in about 14 hours. While that’s still 20 mph of difference in maximum sustained wind, the fact that the two storms were trending in opposite directions, and all else the same, the weaker side of Ike wasn’t that much stronger than the “dirty” side of Beryl, which Houston experienced. This makes the similarities between the storms in terms of widespread tree damage and power outages more comprehensible in retrospect.
Also worth noting, Beryl peaked in the Caribbean as a category 5 storm with ~165 mph maximum sustained winds, confirming the intensity reported in the advisories. The report stated that “the maximum intensity of Beryl is somewhat uncertain due to temporal gaps in the aircraft data near the time of peak intensity, and issues with (microwave) surface wind estimates that prevented their use in this evaluation.” In other words, some of the data was unusable, and the timing of the reconnaissance flight into Beryl may have differed from the exact time of peak intensity. Whatever the case, 165 mph is dang strong.
Beryl didn’t weaken immediately at landfall
One reason Beryl came in stronger than the typical category 1 storm is that the storm likely continued to strengthen just beyond landfall. Where the storm came ashore is not exactly terra firma. Given the geography around Matagorda Bay, the technical landfall may have occurred before the storm truly got on land. The NHC determined this by noting that the minimum pressures recorded near the Texas coast occurred after landfall, indicating that the storm had passed but pressures were still lowering instead of rising as is typically the case. Basically, much like a large ship trying to make a 180° turn, Beryl needed a moment before it could tap the brakes.
No surprises with rain or storm surge
Generally speaking, Beryl produced a surge height of 5 to 7 feet above ground level between Matagorda and Freeport. Much of this is based on high water mark assessments by teams following the storm. Surge values decreased to about 4 to 6 feet above ground level between Freeport and Galveston. Maximum rainfall was around 15 inches in Thompsons in Fort Bend County. That was an exception, as most locations generally saw 8 to 12 inches of rain.
The forecast was excellent—except here
The NHC track forecast beat their average errors at almost all lead times on average through Beryl. A notable exception? When Beryl was in the western Caribbean and the majority of model guidance favored a Mexico landfall. From the report: “The largest track forecast errors occurred during the time that Beryl was moving through the western Caribbean when the forecasts for landfall on the western Gulf coast had a strong left or southward bias. Indeed, the Texas landfall position in the best track is at the right/northward edge of the official forecasts, and the forecast landfall points shifted significantly to the north as the storm approached the coast.” They go on to state that the TABM model (which basically just assumes a medium intensity storm) did best, whereas the ECMWF (Euro) and GFS (American) models failed. The reasons for the failure are not clear at this time.
A glaring caveat to all this? They do not include the ICON or European AI model in track errors, which in my subjective view did best capturing the risks to Houston. One major change we implemented at Space City Weather was to give those models much more weight after Beryl, and they continued to perform well last season. Google’s AI GraphCast also did a very good job identifying the northward risks early on.
Beryl remains a warning to Houston
We’ve said this countless times in the wake of Beryl and since: It was a warning to this region. Beryl had 14 hours of favorable conditions over water to strengthen and went from a tropical storm to nearly a category 2 hurricane. What if it had 24 hours, and started from a 70 mph tropical storm? 36 hours? We’ve seen this play out in Florida, Louisiana, and the Coastal Bend several times since 2017 with storms in the Gulf of Mexico. Harvey, Michael, Ida, Ian, Idalia, Helene, Milton to name some others. It really is a matter of when, not if. We need to continue to focus on ensuring we’re prepared every year with our hurricane kits, getting more people to adopt that practice, and continuing to invest in resiliency and infrastructure improvements, which is to say: Build the damn Ike Dike.
Nothing like admitting you were WRONG and INSTILLING FEAR in January………..disgusting!
If it makes you feel any better the people in power won’t listen anyway. They’ll just plug their ears like they always do.
Instilling fear? By suggesting that people be prepared for weather that is becoming routine for this area? What are you even talking about?
Is it instilling fear for a meteorologist to suggest you bring an umbrella when you leave for work in the morning when there’s a 100% chance of rain? Or is that literally just reasonable advice derived from a logical, data-backed conclusion?
What do you mean “becoming”? This area has ALWAYS routinely had hurricanes. They’re nothing new.
As Beryl traversed the Gulf, there were observations made in this comment thread that ICON was an outlier in anticipating a Houston-area landfall. That is reflected in this discussion, which is helpful as a future reference point. Bringing our attention now to the data-informed description of the behavior of Beryl as it approached the coast is prudent, not “instilling fear” as you put it.
Some folks would say that weather prediction, or any attempts to predict the future, are inherently prone to errors. But this is “Big Weather” we’re talking about. In my town growing up, meteorologists were always making the big bucks, pushing us everyday joes around. You and I know this is a conspiracy to get us to be more prepared and to make infrastructure improvements. All the hallmarks of Big Weather and self-dealing.
Are you OK? Or joking?
That is very interesting 👈🏻
I lived southeast of Houston for 40 years. I went through Alicia, Allison, Ike. Harvey and numerous smaller storms. Beryl was the last one for me. I moved to central Texas in September. Bad weather is everywhere and no place is immune from disaster but I’m looking forward to this summer when I won’t have to spend 4 months preparing for who knows what.
Yeah. I grew up here, but the sitting-duck feeling is getting to be too much. This is probably our last year here.
While every place is vunerable, some places are more so than others, so undecided about where. As long as there’s a good HEB, I’ll consider it. Even New Braunfels, as long as it’s far enough from the Comal (seen too many river floods).
Houston’s current infrastructure isn’t going to hold well. They won’t update it, they’ll just bandaid it and proclaim their ‘good works’. They don’t care. At all. That’s been made fairly obvious.
I’m expecting one more frozen snap (Feb), then come more convection storms with their winds (Mar, Apr). (And I hope not line storms, May.) Then it’s hurricane season (June). I’m just going to use whatever Inbetween Quiet Times to do whatever I can to prep/find another place.
Maybe Brenham or B/CS … nice, neutral, and quiet Texas areas.
I grew up in the NB area and so long as you’re more than 1/4 mile from a river and not in a valley – you’ll be fine and won’t have water intrusion issues like you have in Houston. The hills just make the valleys dangerous on the 4 days a year it rains over there, but we lived near the top of a hill and were never worried, even in the worst storms.
I live in Friendswood with my 90-year-old, bed-bound dad with dementia. He can’t get into a car, so we can’t evacuate. I hate being so vulnerable. My family has lived in the same house in Friendswood since the mid 1970s. I’ll inherit the house, but I don’t want to grow old having to worry about hurricanes every summer. After he passes, I’m moving to San Antonio, near Fort Sam Houston (I’m an Army retiree).
Didn’t Friendswood suffer significant flooding during Harvey?
Beryl and her brethren are why I’m not staying on the Gulf of Mexico coast much longer. I don’t want to go through another hurricane, especially after I turn 70. Too dangerous living here without family nearby.
We live in Fort Bend County south of Houston and were in the NE quadrant of the eyewall. (I could tell by the wind direction.) I thought the winds were stronger than the 75 MPH being forecasted for Sugar Land. Trees blew over all around us, including a large pecan just across the fence and an oak we planted 20 years ago. There was a strip of fallen pecans around us about a mile wide that marked where the eyewall was. We were here for Ike as well as others, including one that went right over us a couple of years ago but Beryl was something else.
Matt, this is very interesting information. Ty for writing it up – figuring out nuances will help us understand what’s going on around us.
Storm analysis must be a very fascinating aspect to what you do – if I were a meteorologist, I’d dive into it too. You’re very good at the physics of storms: taking the unknown and making it known (as much as you can).
Sure am glad you’re with us.
Much love you ☺️ (and to all)
much love to you ☺️
And to All ⚘
My fear and it seems to be playing out daily is that the NHC and NOAA will be relegated to 4th tear Federal agencies or heaven help us….turned over to the states. Can you see governor hot wheels setting up a weather service for the state? Maybe he’ll let ERCOT or Center Point run it since they have done such an outstanding job of making sure our grid is the worst in the country. Why not let them make weather prediction the worst. Just need to give them a bunch of sharpies.
But seriously…..Matt and Eric, thank you for being the only weather people I trust in this city now. Gone are the calm voices of Doug Johnson and Frank Billingsley.
I know! With NOAA likely being hamstrung, we’ll all need to support SCW, Tropical Tidbits & Windy more then ever.
Makes you wanna boycott the Sharpies 🤥
Nothing to do with ERCOT. It was the then state government which decided to deregulate the electrical power system. As far as I know, it all worked well enough when we got our power directly from the generating people – HLP.
You know Matt is now the Manager of Meteorology at CenterPoint, right?
I think you would do well to learn a little bit about what the “Ike Dike” actually entails before you promote it quite like that!
The Ile Dike, officially referred to as the “Texas Coastal Plan” written by the US Army Corps and approved by Congress, will not even begin to protect Houston, Galveston, Bolivar, the Bay Area Communities as it is written. The key price of the plan and what they say they want to build first, the massive gate system across the 2 mile opening of Galveston Bay, is an engineering nightmare with no precedent in size or operational capacity on the face of the earth. The much smaller projects that it claims to be based on are not comparable in terms of water volume, scale, nor proximity to the areas protected!
There are sensible protection projects that could have very easily been done in the 15 + years since Ike, like beach renourishment, a ring levee on Galveston, gates and pumps on Clear Creek and Dickinson Bayous, as well as elevating homes and businesses – all of which are included the USArmy Corps Plan btw, because even they know the Ike Dike gates won’t protect those areas!!
Those smaller projects are good and needed, and will probably never get done, because the Army Corps says they want to build they’re massive gates at the mouth of Galveston Bay first, and so are effectively holding the cheaper more reasonable and badly needed protection projects hostage until they get their massive gates!!
Honestly there is no excuse for someone with your reach and knowledge to be unaware of the problems with this plan, but the level of ignorance on this issue in the Houston metro area is astonishing, so I guess I will forgive it, but I would beg you and your readers to please Google “bayou city waterkeeper texas coastal barrier forum” if you’d like to learn more about what that plan actually entails.
Here on the coast, we know the problems with the Ike Dike plan and we have fought for years to try to get better, cheaper, more reasonable flood protections for all of us, we could use some help!
Azure –
May I suggest that you might want to check Eric Berger’s relationship to the Ike Dike vs claiming SCW’s incompetence to speak on the subject.
Signed… OG Chron/Sci Guy follower.
Galveston floods from both sides in a hurricane. It comes in from the Gulf side and backfills the estuaries, and that’s just the rising water aspect of a storm. I never got how a dike would do anything good, but just cause many more problems. In the long run, it would choke off the wetlands’ ability to even function.
It’s to protect the refineries. Period
To prevent an environmental disaster if the refineries and petrochemical plants are swamped.
That makes a lot of sense.
Wetland mitigation and rejuvenation is the only plausible response. Fortunately, some refineries are closing and soon may the day come when all are gone and the amazing value of wetlands to absorb surge will be rediscovered.
BTW, I agree, being rude on this forum is not cool.
Also, the most essential and obvious solution (to flooding at least) is elevating structures. In Houston, it only needs to be a few feet.
But very expensive to restructure existing houses. it’s cheaper to mitigate than to reconstruct, and wet lands benefit everyone, including wild life
Agree.
But few see the value of the estuaries, mangroves, wetlands.
Many see them as disposable, like Musk who has been busy destroying the ecosystem of the Southern Coastal Bend for years with his little Newtonian-physic bottle rocket toys or people ‘developing’ for whatever reason. Money.
Everything is connected. Maybe one day we’ll learn.
The Ike Dike is not a one size fits all solution and would take a long time to build. There are other more natural mitigation methods that could be put in place much sooner at more reasonable costs and wider expanse. While I appreciate feats in engineering, the Ike Dike potentially has its flaws as others have touched on in the comments here. And as this article states, wind is another increasing issue. If storms and their destructive intensity are increasing with a variety of symptoms, more immediate holistic solutions need to be executed. Ike Dike does not address failing infrastructure, zoning, among many other issues. I appreciate the call to attention and call for action, but I strongly disagree that the Ike Dike is the remedial solution, especially not the only one.
If you were following Joe Bastardi you would have known that Beryl was going to turn towards Texas long before the models picked up on it. A meteorologist using his experience instead of just relying on model runs.