Ponderous and laden with rain, Tropical Storm Beta degraded to a tropical depression and stalled Tuesday over southeastern Texas. It delivered storm surges and flash flooding to a more than 300-mile stretch of the Gulf coast from southwestern Louisiana to Corpus Christi TX.
The storm made landfall late Monday night just north of Port O’Connor, roughly midway between Galveston and Corpus Christi. By Tuesday morning it was moving slowly inland to the northeast, but was expected to remain over Texas through the night and into Wednesday.
Its top winds declined to 35 mph, but the amount of rain was staggering; up to 18 inches had already drenched the region by Tuesday morning.
Flash flooding leaves stranded vehicles underwater as Tropical Storm Beta lashes Houston. https://t.co/614atz1D1S pic.twitter.com/F0TikJ3hwe
— ABC News (@ABC) September 22, 2020
Beta is the 9th named storm to make landfall in the continental U.S. this year, tying a record set in 1916. It’s first storm with a Greek-letter name ever to reach the U.S. coast.
So many named storms have formed in the Atlantic this year that the Weather Service’s annual list of names ran out, forcing use of the Greek alphabet for just the second time since the 1950s.
A storm surge of up to four feet was expected in coastal cities like Galveston and Beaumont, south and east of Houston.
On Monday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a preemptive disaster declaration for 29 Texas counties ahead of Beta’s arrival. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards followed suit.
“Beta was expected to linger over Texas then eventually move over Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi later in the week, bringing the risk of flash flooding.,” reports the Associated Press.
Beta was expected to weaken into a tropical depression later on Tuesday, but flash flooding was likely in Arkansas and Mississippi as the system moves farther inland.
Nic Hunter, mayor of Lake Charles LA, “worried about Beta’s rainfall could set back efforts in his Louisiana community to recover after Laura, which damaged about 95% of the city’s 30,000 structures” just three weeks ago, the AP says. “Hunter said the worry of another storm was ‘an emotional and mental toll for a lot of our citizens.’”
Despite the extent of the flooding, forecasters say Beta isn’t expected to be nearly as damaging as Hurricane Harvey in 2017, when Houston was drowned in more than 50 inches of rain. Harvey caused $125 billion in damage in Texas alone.
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