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It could take days or even weeks for power to be restored to millions of Texas residents affected by deadly and destructive Storm Beryl, with heat indexes reaching triple digits in the state, creating dangerous conditions for those without air conditioning.
Beryl struck South Texas on Monday as a Category 1 hurricane, leaving more than 2.5 million homes without power in Texas and Louisiana and killing at least eight people.
More than 2.1 million people across Texas were still without power as of Tuesday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us.
The storm unleashed flooding rains and winds that turned roads into torrents, downed power lines and hurled trees at homes, roads and cars. The storm was losing strength and losing center as it hurtled toward the Midwest on Tuesday, but it still threatened to cause further flooding and tornadoes in its path.
At a press conference Tuesday, state officials urged residents to avoid driving on flooded roads.
As difficult recovery and cleanup efforts continue across southeast Texas, including the Houston area, extreme heat continued to pound the region on Tuesday and is expected to continue into Wednesday, creating dangerous conditions for people who work outdoors, the elderly, people with chronic illnesses, children and those without adequate cooling.
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A man investigates a damaged home in Surfside Beach, Texas, on Monday, July 8.
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Houston residents inspect downed trees in their neighborhood after Hurricane Beryl ripped through the area on Monday.
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John Shapley/Houston Chronicle via The Associated Press
Blake Brown had his dog, Dolly, in the family’s car on Sunday as the outer rim of Tropical Storm Beryl began to approach Port O’Connor, Texas.
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Workers board up the windows of an ice cream shop in Port Aransas, Texas, on Saturday.
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Soldiers remove branches downed by Hurricane Beryl in Tulum, Mexico, on Friday.
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Everton Evanks walks through his living room on Thursday after Beryl’s strong winds blew the roof off his home in St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica.
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People sit on cots on Thursday at the National Arena in Kingston, Jamaica, which served as a shelter after Beryl hit.
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A ship damaged by Hurricane Beryl lies at a wharf in Kingston on Thursday.
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Simone Francis collects items from her home that were blown away by Hurricane Beryl in Old Harbour, Jamaica, on Thursday.
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Yachts were anchored in Nichupté Lagoon in Cancun, Mexico, on Thursday in preparation for Beryl’s attack.
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A man walks next to a fallen tree in Kingston, Jamaica on Thursday.
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A car drives near a storm damage site in Kingston on Wednesday.
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Workers install wooden panels to cover glass doors at a hotel in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, on Wednesday.
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Refugees from Union Island arrived in Kingstown, St. Vincent and the Grenadines on 2 July.
Arthur Daniel/Reuters
On July 2nd, a house was damaged in Petite Martinique.
Samir Aponte/Reuters
People walk near a damaged vehicle in Cumanacor, Venezuela, on July 2.
Ricardo Hernandez/AP
On July 2, waves from Hurricane Beryl crashed over a seawall in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Lucan Ollivierre/AP
Pastor Winston Alleyne clears trees downed by Hurricane Beryl in St. Vincent and the Grenadines on July 2.
Ricardo Mazarin/AP
Fishing boats damaged by Hurricane Beryl pile up at the Bridgetown Fisheries Plant in Barbados on July 1.
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Sylvia Small waits to enter the Bridgetown Fisheries jetty to assess damage to her boat in Barbados on July 1.
Matthew Dominik/NASA
NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick shared a photo of the hurricane as seen from space on July 1. Seeing the hurricane on camera “gave me both an eerie feeling and a bit of weather nerd excitement,” he said in a post on X.
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Members of the Barbadian Armed Forces clear sand from a road in Oistins, Barbados.
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A man drains water from a damaged restaurant in Hastings, Barbados.
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Brad Reinhart, senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, tracks Hurricane Beryl on July 1.
Gilbert Bellamy/Reuters
In Kingston, Jamaica, people wait in line for groceries as beryl approaches.
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On June 30, a man boarded up a store window in Bridgetown, Barbados.
According to local weather stations, the heat index in Houston exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday. The heat index measures how hot the body feels due to both heat and humidity. The station at Hobby International Airport reported a heat index of 103 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures in the area are expected to rise into the mid-90s Fahrenheit during the day and through Wednesday.
Being in the heat for long periods of time and not being able to cool down puts you at risk for damage to the brain and other vital organs, as well as heat exhaustion and other heat-related illnesses, such as stroke.
“The lack of adequate cooling, combined with large numbers of people outdoors cleaning up after beryl, can create dangerously hot conditions,” said the National Weather Service in Houston. Extreme heat is the deadliest weather event in the United States, killing more than twice as many people each year as hurricanes and tornadoes combined.
But it could take days to restore power to hard-hit areas, according to Public Utilities Commission of Texas Chairman Thomas Gleason, and in the coastal city of Galveston, city officials estimate it could take as long as two weeks for power to be restored.
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Texas utility CenterPoint Energy bore the brunt of the outages, with nearly 2 million customers without power on Monday night, according to PowerOutage.us. The company said it had prepared for Beryl’s impact but that the damage was worse than expected.
“The storm deviated from its originally predicted path and had a greater than anticipated impact on our customers, systems and infrastructure, resulting in power outages to more than 2.26 million customers at its peak,” the company said.
The company expects to restore power to one million customers by Wednesday evening.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire, whose home also lost power Monday, said CenterPoint and the city are “fully aware” of how urgent it is to restore power.
“We care about all communities. No one community is favored over another. Every Houston resident is important to us. We’ll get your electricity back as quickly as possible,” he said.
Beryl has since weakened from a record-breaking Category 5 storm at its peak to a much weaker storm with winds of 30 mph. Still, remnants of Beryl will move into the inland US through the middle of this week, causing flooding and tornadoes.
Beryl became the first storm of the Atlantic hurricane season to make landfall in the U.S. after carving a destructive path through the Caribbean and killing at least nine people, kicking off what experts say will be a far-from-normal hurricane season as fossil fuel pollution contributes to abnormally warm ocean waters and rapidly intensifying storms.
The center of the storm is expected to reach Arkansas on Tuesday morning and move through southern Missouri and Illinois by the end of the day. It is then expected to move into Indiana on Wednesday morning and move through Ohio and Michigan before reaching Canada by the weekend.
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The threat of tornadoes linked to Beryl increased Tuesday, with the Storm Prediction Center raising the risk of severe thunderstorms to Level 3 out of 5 for western Kentucky and southern Indiana.
Parts of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys were under threat of severe thunderstorms, up to Level 2 out of 5, mainly due to tornadoes associated with the storm, the center said. Fourteen tornadoes caused by Beryl were reported in Texas, Louisiana and southern Arkansas on Monday.
About 23.4 million people are currently under flood watch, and flash flood warnings were issued for parts of the storm’s path Tuesday morning.
Extreme heat warnings were issued for about half the U.S. population on Tuesday, spanning both coasts, with the West Coast being particularly hard hit.
An intense heat wave is sweeping the West and is expected to remain in the region for the next few days, with temperatures expected to reach 10 to 30 degrees above normal in some areas.
Human-caused climate change is making heatwaves around the world much more frequent and intense, exposing communities to increasingly dangerous temperatures.
“Record-high temperatures will continue through mid-week along much of the West Coast, while record-low temperatures will continue from the Gulf Coast to the northeastern East Coast,” the Weather Prediction Center said.
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Extreme heat warnings, watches and advisories have been issued for much of Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada and southwestern Arizona. Temperatures in parts of western Nevada and northeastern California aren’t expected to drop below 100 degrees Fahrenheit until next weekend, the National Weather Service in Reno said.
The heatwaves have already shattered daily temperature records in the region and caused deaths.
Four people died in Oregon over the weekend from suspected heatstroke, according to a press release from Multnomah County, Oregon, and one man died of heatstroke while riding a motorbike in Death Valley, California, on Saturday when temperatures reached a high of 128 degrees Fahrenheit.
CNN’s Lauren Mascarenhas, Robert Shackelford, Jamie Lynch, Joe Sutton, Taylor Ward and Elise Hammond contributed to this report.
