Beryl Batters Texas, Leaves Nearly 3M Without Power

Facts

• Beryl made landfall along the Texas coast on Monday as a Category 1 hurricane, causing widespread damage and at least eight casualties in Texas and Louisiana.¹
• Last week, Beryl reached the strength of a Category 5 hurricane in the Caribbean but weakened as it made landfall on Mexico. The storm — now a tropical depression — is expected to move inland across the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys over the next two days before dissipating.²
• Heavy rains and intense winds have knocked out power for nearly 3M people, with widespread power outages and high waters complicating rescue efforts.³
• Ahead of the storm, Texas’ Acting Gov. Dan Patrick issued a disaster declaration for the state's 121 counties, warning residents to prepare for Beryl's anticipated impacts.⁴
• Elsewhere in the US, nearly 130M people faced record-breaking heat over the past weekend and into this week, with excessive heat warnings issued in areas of both the West Coast and East Coast.⁵
• The extreme heat has also fueled wildfires across the Western US, with blazes in California — including one that has burned over 16K acres in Santa Barbara County — as well as Utah and Oregon.⁶

Sources: ¹CNN, ²USA Today, ³Associated Press, ⁴ABC13 Houston, ⁵France 24 and ⁶Axios.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by Environmental Defense Fund. Climate change is intensifying extreme weather events, driving hotter heat waves, bigger storm surges, more severe droughts, and heavier snowfall. Leaders must take action soon to combat climate change before extreme weather events go beyond society's ability to effectively prepare, respond, recover, and mitigate.
• Narrative B, as provided by Investors. While climate change is blamed for nearly every extreme weather event, weather is influenced by many different factors that often have little to nothing to do with global warming. More research must be done before climate change can be named as the cause of these weather events.

Predictions