Beta delivers deluge to Texas coastline, trapping motorists

After days of lurking off the Texas coast and sending storm surge sweeping through coastal communities, Tropical Storm Beta became the ninth named storm to make landfall in the United States during the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season.

Beta crossed the Texas coast near the southern end of Texas's Matagorda Peninsula near Port O'Connor, about halfway between Galveston and Corpus Christi, around 10 p.m. CDT on Monday. The storm retained a maximum sustained wind speed of 45 mph as it crashed onshore.

Much like Hurricane Sally, the slow-moving storm proved that powerful wind speed is not the only threat from tropical systems as flash flooding dangers continued to mount throughout the day Tuesday and into Wednesday.

AccuWeather estimates the total damage and economic loss caused by Tropical Storm Beta to be about $1 billion, according to AccuWeather Founder and CEO Dr. Joel N. Myers, who has studied the financial impacts of tropical storms for nearly six for decades.

The damage estimate is based on an analysis incorporating independent methods to evaluate all direct and indirect impacts of the storm and is based on a variety of sources, statistics, and unique techniques AccuWeather uses to estimate damage.

AccuWeather's estimate includes damage to homes and businesses as well as their contents and cars, job and wage losses, infrastructure damage, auxiliary business losses, medical expenses, including impacts to health and related lingering effects, and closures. The estimate also accounts for the costs of power outages to businesses and individuals and for economic losses because of highway and road closures and evacuations, as well as expenses for cleanup operations.

What was left of the storm was tracking slowly across the lower Mississippi Valley on Wednesday afternoon and flooding rain will continue to spread farther east across through late in the week, forecasters said.

Video footage on Twitter showed extensive flooding along U.S. Route 59 as far north as Houston about 100 miles from the point of landfall, earlier Monday night. Cars became trapped in the floodwaters as Beta inched across the region.

In Houston, a man escaped from his SUV after driving it into floodwaters to try and reach his son.

"I thought that I was going to tip over," the man told the person who had come to his aid, both standing in the chest-high waters. His car, the front end tilted down, was nearly entirely swallowed by the storm surge.

Houston, Texas, resident Lashuntrice Bradley was another victim of Beta's flooding.

"I actually picked my mother up from the airport, and I dropped her off. I thought it would be better to head back to my place before it got too bad, it started raining hard again. However, as soon as I got on the road I ran into the flood waters," Bradley told AccuWeather National Reporter Bill Wadell.

Bradley was stuck in the flood but volunteers and neighbors with lifted pickup trucks came to her rescue.

"I really think that it's excellent that they're helping out. I don't know what I would have done without them," Bradley said.

Daily rainfall records were set on Tuesday at William P. Hobby Airport and George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) in Houston. A total of 3.58 inches was measured at IAH, breaking the old record of 3.14 inches from 1965. At Hobby, a whopping total of 7.32 inches was recorded, smashing the previous record of 3.86 inches from 1997.

The Hobby airport is located southeast of downtown Houston, while the George Bush Intercontinental Airport is located north of the city.

Emergency officials in Houston report they have conducted nearly 100 high-water rescues over a 16-hour span as Beta's lingering downpours turned roadways into rivers. All of the rescues were concentrated in South Houston and related to flooded roadways, according to the Houston Chronicle.

"Given the sheer number of emergencies, not a good bet to think you'll be rescued before your vehicle is overcome with water or suffer a near-drowning incident," Samuel Peña, the fire chief for the Houston Fire Department wrote on Twitter Tuesday.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said there were about 70 high water locations in the city.

Residents were still dealing with Beta's flooding issues on Tuesday night as a wastewater spill was reported by the city of Houston after intense, sustained rainfall greater than 10 inches in a 24-hour period.

Amid the widespread flooding in the city, roadways such as SH-288 were closed as cars continued to try and plow through the floodwaters.

Beta clung to its tropical storm status through Tuesday morning, then weakened to a depression at 10 a.m. CDT with winds of 35 mph. The storm was only moving northeastward at 2 mph.

"We currently have both storm surge and rainfall going on right now," National Weather Service Meteorologist Amaryllis Cotto in Galveston, Texas, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Beta's rainfall total paled in comparison to that caused by Hurricane Harvey, which unleashed up to 61 inches, but meteorologists and city officials alike still urged residents to take the rising water levels seriously.

"If you don't have to get on the road right now, stay home for now and that includes city employees," Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said over Twitter on Tuesday. "Stay home for now and pay attention to weather reports."

Videos circulating over social media showed high water levels at multiple creeks and bayous in southeastern Texas, the water breaching their banks in some areas. Sergio Chapa, a reporter in the Houston area, reported that Brays Bayou had overflowed Tuesday morning, flooding the nearby Hermman Park pedestrian tunnel.

About 26 miles south of Houston in League City, Texas, city officials shared footage of Clear Creek at Walter Park at high levels as rain continued, warning that the flooding could worsen.

Despite the high levels of flooding, some residents are breathing a sigh of relief after Beta made landfall as a tropical storm rather than a Category 1 hurricane.

Maria Serrano Culpepper had evacuated her home in Magnolia Beach near Matagorda Bay on Sunday night with her two daughters and dogs, worried about becoming trapped should the storm have strengthened.

"I'm feeling OK now. I had two nights without sleeping because I was worried about [Beta] being a Category 1 hurricane," Culpepper, who works as an engineer at a nearby chemical plant, told the AP. "I calmed down when the storm lost power."

In hurricane-weary Lake Charles, Mayor Nic Hunter expressed worry over Beta hindering Laura recovery efforts. The Category 4 hurricane had damaged about 95% of the city's 30,000 structures, according to the AP, and Hunter told the news agency the worry of another storm was "an emotional and mental toll for a lot of our citizens."

Beta's storm surge had caused damage across the Texas coast as early as Sunday when rolling waves generated by the storm battered and destroyed part of the 61st Street Pier in Galveston, Texas, despite the effort of workers trying to save the structure while daylight lasted. Part of the pier was found washed up farther down along the beach the next morning, according to KHOU 11.

By Tuesday evening, Beta had become a tropical rainstorm as forecast, with maximum sustained winds of 30 mph. On Wednesday morning, Beta was located about 60 miles west of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and was moving at a speed of 9 mph.

Ahead of Beta's landfall, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had issued a disaster declaration for 29 counties. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency ahead of the storm as the state continues to recover from Hurricane Laura's landfall.

This season's Beta set a new record for the earliest 23rd-named storm to develop in the basin, beating the formation of 2005's Tropical Storm Alpha by 34 days. Due to an unnamed storm added to the 2005 season in a post-season analysis between Stan and Tammy, records from "T" storms on don't align with their respective letters.

Beta is also the first storm named after a Greek letter to make landfall on the continental U.S. Forecasters are employing use of the Greek alphabet for only the second time since 2005. During that hurricane season, six storms were named using the Greek alphabet.

The system also wrote another page in the record books for the hyperactive 2020 hurricane season. Beta was the ninth named storm to make landfall in the U.S. this year, tying a record set in 1916 for the most storms to strike the continental U.S. in an Atlantic hurricane season, according to Philip Klotzbach, a Colorado State University meteorologist. Sally, Laura, Marco, Isaias, Hanna, Fay, and Cristobal are the other storms that crashed ashore in the U.S. in 2020.

Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.