AUSTIN, Texas — After crossing over the Yucatan peninsula on Friday, Beryl has now emerged over the Gulf of Mexico with sights set on Texas. After dealing with land interaction, the system has been downgraded to a tropical storm for now, but conditions look suitable for strengthening into a hurricane on approach to landfall.
On Friday, we saw a dramatic shift to the east for Beryl's forecast cone, but updates as of Saturday have been more consistent. If the eastward trend in the track continues, it will keep reducing the rainfall potential for much of our KVUE area; however, we still could see direct impacts from Beryl locally, especially for our far eastern counties.
Ahead of possible impacts from Beryl, we have issued a Weather Impact Alert Day for Monday. Weather Impact Alert Days are not issued to scare anyone, but rather to highlight a day where the weather could disrupt your plans in a significant way.
To be clear, we still have lots of uncertainty in the track of Beryl, but we have issued a Weather Impact Alert Day to highlight the potential for locally heavy rain and strong winds, especially in our eastern counties.
Below you can find the latest forecast cone from the National Hurricane Center.
When looking the forecast track, it’s important to remember that the eastern side of a tropical system is what’s known as the “wet” side of the storm. Areas along and east of the center line track for Beryl will be best positioned for heavy rain and tropical impacts.
In turn, the western side of the storm is known as the “dry” side. Missing the center of the storm even just slightly on the dry side can leave areas with little to no rainfall, despite heavy rain extended well out from the center of the storm on the eastern side.
Now that high-resolution models have been able to help get a better consensus on Beryl's track and potential local impacts, we can see that areas along and east of Interstate 35 should make sure they have a general plan in place for Monday and early Tuesday.
Below you can see the latest consensus from the spaghetti models.
So, let’s analyze the latest forecast cone. The center line track now brings the center of Beryl into our far southeastern zones on Monday. This would bring a risk for flooding and strong winds into Fayette, Milam and Lee counties but would produce a very steep gradient for much drier weather west of I-35.
Of course, this is frustrating given that the Hill Country is the spot that most needs the rain, but we would still perhaps have direct tropical impacts for at least portions of our KVUE area.
Now let’s pretend that the track continues to shift even farther eastward. Again, this is a real possibility. In this scenario, a potentially stronger system would head directly into southeast Texas or East Texas toward Houston, and all of our KVUE area would be left on the dry side of the storm.
Now that the cone has almost "straightened" out since Friday and the eastward shift is less pronounced, here is a look at the western shift scenario. This is the more unlikely forecast, but even small westward shifts would play a big role for local flooding and wind concern.
The latest model comparison shows this difference in rainfall potential in these two scenarios. One case would bring heavy rain and flooding close to the metro and I-35 corridor, the other keeps the heavy stuff far east.
Due to the lower rain potential in some scenarios, we need to look at wind potential too. Even if we see little rain, Monday will certainly be a blustery day across the region. Gusts of 30 mph to 45 mph will spread across the central and east regions, with upwards of 20 mph to 30 mph possible for the Hill Country.
The bottom line is that we will continue to closely monitor the forecast. A Weather Impact Alert Day remains in place for Monday due the possible impacts of heavy rain and wind from Beryl. That being said, we fully expect additional forecast changes over the weekend, so we ask that you check in at least once a day for the latest.
If you would like to start some preparations ahead of time, it would be a good idea to clean up any lingering July Fourth decorations or other debris in the yard that could be picked up by winds. Even one big gust can put your trash can in the neighbor's yard, so be sure to secure things like that. Also, if your home is vulnerable to flooding and you live east of I-35, it would not hurt to check in and make sure things are properly waterproofed.
The KVUE weather team will continue to closely monitor this developing forecast.
In the meantime, the extended forecast can be found below:
