But at long last, Beryl is finally winding down. It has become a “post-tropical cyclone,” or a remnant low-pressure system in the mid-latitudes, and is now crawling across Canada. In its wake, more than a million customers in the Houston area remain without power, and people across the Mississippi Valley, Ohio and the Northeast are trying to ride out the tornadoes and flooding from Beryl’s remnants.
The storm caused extensive damage in Grenada, where Hurricane Beryl made landfall as a Category 4 storm on July 1. It then became a Category 5 storm shortly after.
Here we review Brill’s voyage and highlight key moments in her historic journey across the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the United States.
16 days ago: The National Hurricane Center’s first forecast identified an area of disturbed weather over the eastern tropical Atlantic Ocean. This area had emerged off the coast of Africa the day before, on June 24. This was the tropical wave that eventually became Beryl.
13 days agoOn June 28, the tropical wave strengthened into a tropical depression—a precursor to a named storm. Initial consultation He noted that the storm could eventually become a hurricane when it hits the Lesser Antilles. The system was named “Beryl” at 11 p.m. PT.
12 days ago: Just 24 hours after being declared a tropical depression, Beryl had strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane with winds of 75 mph about 720 miles east-southeast of Barbados. A hurricane warning was lifted for Barbados, with hurricane warnings issued for St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada. (Grenada is where Beryl eventually hit first.)
11 days ago: At 5 p.m. PT on June 30, Beryl was declared an “extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane.” Maximum sustained winds were recorded at 130 mph. This made Beryl the furthest southward Category 4 hurricane ever in the Atlantic, the fastest Category 4 storm ever to form, and the fastest storm to intensify before September.
10 days ago: On the morning of July 1, Hurricane Beryl struck Carriacou Island in Grenada, engulfing the island with a destructive ring of winds that reached 140 mph around its center. Extensive damage was reported. By 11 p.m. PT, Beryl had become a Category 5 hurricane—the fastest on record. It strengthened overnight, with winds reaching 160 mph.
9 days ago: On July 2, Beryl’s maximum sustained winds reached 165 mph—8 mph above the maximum for Category 5 status. That makes it the strongest July storm on record in the Atlantic.
8 days ago: On July 3, Hurricane Beryl struck southern Jamaica as a Category 4 storm, with the eyewall sweeping across the southern tip of the island.
7 days ago: On July 4, the northern side of Hurricane Beryl struck the Cayman Islands as a Category 3 storm. Its violent eye winds remained south of the island, meaning that the Cayman Islands suffered primarily from tropical storm effects.
6 days ago: On July 5, Hurricane Beryl struck the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. It made landfall as a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 110 mph, though it quickly weakened after making landfall near Tulum.
5 days ago: On July 6, Beryl emerged in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico as a tropical storm, having weakened and lost much of its inner core. The storm spent most of the next day trying to reorganize itself.
4 days ago: By 11 p.m. Central Time on July 7, Beryl had regained its hurricane status.
3 days ago: At 4 a.m. Central time Monday, Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Matagorda, Texas, as a Category 1 hurricane. A last-minute run to the east put Houston in the storm’s eastern wall — the most ferocious part of the storm. That pummeled the metropolitan area with winds of 80 mph and dumped up to a foot of rain. About 2.5 million customers lost power. Then, in the afternoon, a tornado ripped through northeast Texas, southern Arkansas and western Louisiana. The National Weather Service issued 115 tornado warnings, a record for July.
2 days ago: On June 9, Beryl was downgraded to a tropical depression as it slid along the Indiana-Ohio border. Its remnant vortex helped spawn several tornadoes, including a devastating tornado in Mount Vernon, Indiana, which caused extensive damage to the area. Demolition of a warehouse.
1 day ago: As the remnant low pressure from Beryl passed along the border between eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, the remaining circulation helped generate rotating thunderstorms and several tornadoes in New York and neighboring states. In New York, the National Weather Service issued State Record: 42 Tornado Warnings in One Day, Leads to Total of more than 200 During Beryl’s three-day trek through the lower 44 states, northern Vermont experienced significant flooding, with rainfall totals of 4 to 6 inches.
Thursday: Beryl disappeared into a tropical low pressure system northeast of Lake Ontario in southern Canada.
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