HOUSTON (AFP) – Beryl strengthened to a hurricane before hitting the southern United States (US) state of Texas yesterday, where some residents were evacuated over warnings of flooding and power outages.
The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in its latest update that winds were reaching 80 130 kilometers per hour as Beryl approached the Texas coast.
“Conditions (are) deteriorating with dangerous storm surge, flash flooding, and strong winds expected,” the NHC warned early yesterday.
The National Weather Service issued a tornado alert for parts of Texas including Houston, which is home to 2.3 million people.
“We have to take Beryl very, very seriously. Our worst enemy is complacency,” said Houston Mayor John Whitmire.
The mayor said he wanted residents in Houston “to know the conditions that you go to sleep under tonight will not be the same that you wake up to in the morning”.
Several areas of the Texas coast were under hurricane and storm warnings on Sunday. Beryl is expected to make landfall between the port city of Corpus Christi and Galveston Island.
The NHC said that rainfall of up to 38 centimetres is expected in parts of Texas, warning it could cause flash flooding in some areas.
Authorities in Nueces County, home to Corpus Christi, asked tourists to leave the city, while neighbouring Refugio County – yet to fully recover from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 – issued a mandatory evacuation order on Saturday.
The city of Galveston, southeast of Houston, issued a voluntary evacuation order for some areas, with videos on social media showing lines of cars heading out of town.
