Tropical Storm Beryl unleashed heavy rains and powerful winds along the Texas coast on Monday, knocking out power to more than 2.5 million customers and flooding streets with fast-rising waters as first responders raced to rescue stranded residents.
Of the 2.5 million without power as of Tuesday afternoon, more than 2.2 million were CenterPoint Energy customers, according to poweroutage.us. CenterPoint said it has restored power for 504,863 customers in the last 24 hours, according to its outage tracker.
Entergy reported roughly 250,000 customers without power, Texas New Mexico Power reported 111,000, and Sam Houston Electric Cooperative reported 76,000. The remaining outages are scattered throughout providers in the Southeast portion of Texas.
Beryl had already cut a deadly path through parts of Mexico and the Caribbean before making a turn, sweeping ashore as a Category 1 hurricane in Texas early Monday, then later weakening to a tropical storm. At least two people were killed. The National Hurricane Center said damaging winds and flash flooding will continue as Beryl continues pushing inland.
More than 2 million homes and businesses in the Houston area were without electricity, CenterPoint Energy officials said. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is acting governor while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is out of the country, said crews cannot get out to restore it until the wind dies down.
Beryl and the widespread power outages were just the latest weather blows for Houston, where nearly 1 million people lost power when deadly storms ripped through the area in May, killed eight people and brought much of the city to a standstill.
Three times during its one week of life, Beryl has gained 35 mph (56 kph) in wind speed in 24 hours or less, the official weather service definition of rapid intensification.
Beryl’s explosive growth into an unprecedented early whopper of a storm indicates the hot water of the Atlantic and Caribbean and what the Atlantic hurricane belt can expect for the rest of the storm season, experts said.
This article contains reporting from the Associated Press.
