Restoring power to millions of Texans affected by the deadly and destructive storm Beryl could take days or even weeks, creating a hazardous situation as sweltering heat sets in across the state.
Beryl struck southern Texas as a Category 1 hurricane on Monday, knocking out power to more than 2.5 million homes and causing at least eight deaths in Texas and Louisiana. As of Tuesday morning, over 2.2 million Texans remained without power, according to PowerOutage.us.
The storm brought flooding rains and high winds, turning roads into rivers, downing power lines, and toppling trees onto homes, roads, and cars. Though it has weakened and lost its core, Beryl is moving toward the Midwest, still posing risks of flooding and tornadoes along its path.
As recovery and cleanup efforts commence in southeast Texas, including the Houston area, extreme heat is expected on Tuesday and Wednesday, creating dangerous conditions for outdoor workers, the elderly, people with chronic illnesses, children, and those without adequate cooling.
Prolonged heat exposure without cooling can lead to severe health issues such as heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and damage to the brain and other vital organs.
A heat advisory is in place for southeast Texas, where the heat index could reach 105 degrees and temperatures in the 90s are forecasted.
“The lack of proper cooling combined with many people outdoors cleaning up after Beryl could produce dangerous heat conditions,” the National Weather Service in Houston warned. Heat is the deadliest form of extreme weather in the U.S., claiming more lives annually than hurricanes and tornadoes combined.
Restoring power to affected communities will take several days, according to Thomas Gleeson, chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas. In Galveston, city officials estimate it could take up to two weeks to restore electricity.
Texas utility CenterPoint Energy has experienced the majority of outages, with nearly 2 million customers in the dark Monday night. Despite bracing for Beryl’s impact, the company reported more severe damage than anticipated, with outages peaking at over 2.26 million customers.
CenterPoint Energy aims to restore power to 1 million customers by Wednesday night.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire, whose home also lost power, assured residents that both CenterPoint and the city are prioritizing electricity restoration.
“We’re going to take care of every community. No community is favored over another community. Every Houstonian is important to us. We’ll get your power on as quickly as possible,” he said.
Beryl, once a record-shattering Category 5 storm, has weakened to a system with 30 mph winds. However, it continues to threaten flooding and tornadoes as it moves inland.
After devastating the Caribbean and causing at least eight deaths there, Beryl became the first storm of the Atlantic hurricane season to make landfall in the U.S. Experts warn that this hurricane season will be abnormal due to fossil fuel pollution contributing to warmer waters and rapidly intensifying storms.
The storm’s center reached Arkansas on Tuesday morning and is expected to move through southern Missouri and Illinois by the end of the day, then continue into Indiana on Wednesday morning, and through Ohio and Michigan into Canada by week’s end.
The threat of tornadoes linked to Beryl is increasing, prompting the Storm Prediction Center to raise the severe thunderstorm risk to level 3 of 5 for western Kentucky and southern Indiana.
Parts of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys face a level 2 of 5 severe thunderstorm threat, primarily for tornadoes. Fourteen tornadoes were reported Monday in Texas, Louisiana, and southern Arkansas.
Currently, about 23.4 million people are under flood watches, with some flash flood warnings in the storm’s path.
Heat alerts are in place for about half of the U.S. population, with the West Coast being particularly affected. An oppressive heat wave is expected to hover over the region for several more days, bringing temperatures 10 to 30 degrees above average in some areas.
Human-caused climate change is driving more frequent and intense heat waves globally, exposing communities to increasingly dangerous temperatures.
“Record high temperatures to continue into mid-week across large portions of the West coast, while record high minimum temperatures stretch from the Gulf coast, northeast along the East coast,” the Weather Prediction Center stated.
Excessive heat warnings, watches, and advisories are in effect for nearly all of Washington state, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, and southwest Arizona. Parts of western Nevada and northeastern California are not expected to see high temperatures below 100 degrees until next weekend.
Extreme heat has already broken daily high temperature records and caused deaths. In Oregon, four people died from suspected heat-related illnesses over the weekend. A motorcyclist died from heat exposure in California’s Death Valley on Saturday, where temperatures reached 128 degrees.
CNN’s Lauren Mascarenhas, Robert Shackelford, Jamiel Lynch, Joe Sutton, Taylor Ward, and Elise Hammond contributed to this report.