LAKE JACKSON, Tex. — An unusually early-season hurricane, the latest in a recent spate of soaking and turbulent storms to hit the sprawling Houston metroplex, killed at least four people, trapped others on flooded roadways and knocked out power to nearly 3 million people Monday.
It was the latest stage of destruction for a storm that set records for its intensity so early in the hurricane season, fueled by extraordinarily hot Atlantic waters. And some feared it was a hint of more storms to come.
“To have a storm of this magnitude this early is not something that we would predict or expect,” said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, chief executive of the nation’s third-largest county by population, with 4.7 million residents. “There’s still the vast majority of hurricane season left. Our hope for the sake of our mental health and safety there’s not going to be another storm, but we have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”
For Gulf Coast residents like Mike Beggs, that was an overwhelming thought. He and his wife left the Austin area last year for a quiet retirement in an RV on land they own in the waterside town of Sargent, Tex. Just weeks before Beryl sent him fleeing inland, flooding from Tropical Storm Alberto inundated a small building on the property and destroyed his freezer.
Now, sitting in his black pickup truck, waiting for word of how Sargent might have fared, he was already debating whether it was worth it to go back.
“This is just the beginning of the season, and I’ve already had two floods,” he said. “I’m thinking of selling it and going somewhere higher.”
Along the coast, the landscape was one of trees snapped in half or pulled up by their roots, of mangled signs and roofs and fences, of flooded fields and drainage ditches full or overflowing. Storm surge, or the sudden rise in sea level above normal tide, reached 4 to 6 feet along portions of the middle Texas coast.
By midday Monday, the cleanup was already underway in a hard-hit neighborhood near downtown Lake Jackson, where trees had fallen on some houses, hundreds of limbs littered the street and the power remained out even as the sweltering sun reemerged. Heather Broussard and her relatives quickly amassed a 10-foot high pile of debris by the curb on Azalea Street, and there was plenty left to do.
“It was pretty bad,” the 48-year-old Lake Jackson native said. “Do I ever want to go through this again? No.”
At least four people died in the storm, according to authorities, including a man who drowned in Houston. A person in Houston was killed in a fire that was likely caused by lightning related to the storm, Mayor John Whitmire said. Two of the deaths confirmed by early Monday occurred under similar circumstances — people seeking shelter in the safety of their homes, only to be caught beneath falling trees. The victims were a 74-year-old grandmother on the north side of Houston, who was in her bedroom when the tree came crashing down, and a 53-year-old father crushed by debris from a falling oak in Atascocita, about 20 miles northeast of Houston. A woman and children were also in the home and unharmed, the Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said on X, formerly Twitter.
Across the Houston region, authorities searched flooded roadways for people stranded in their vehicles in rising floodwaters.
“It’s a huge city pretty much dependent on automobiles and people need to get to work and school and just flat didn’t stay at home,” Whitmire said.
