BMS Tropical Update - 07/06/2024

By: Andrew Siffert

After traveling approximately 3,600 miles, primarily as a major hurricane, Beryl has transitioned into a somewhat disorganized tropical storm after encountering the Yucatan peninsula most of yesterday. The current satellite presentation is a far cry from its former glory as a category 5 hurricane around the Windward Islands.

This is the Visible satellite image of Beryl in the southern Gulf Of Mexico, which shows Beryl has a compact center with limited deep convection on the south side.


If you've been following the National Hurricane Center Official (NHC) forecast and these BMS Tropical Updates, you'll have noticed a steady northward movement in Beryl’s expected landfall location since the middle of this past week. The intensity forecasts have been fluctuating, but overall, they've been leaning towards the lower end. However, this morning, it's clear that Beryl is facing new challenges due to dry air and southern wind shear as it makes its final push toward the Texas coastline. This shift in intensity forecasts underscores the need for caution and readiness for potential changes.

Beryl’s Expected Track Toward Texas

Over the last 24 hours, the various forecast models have been grappling with Beryl’s expected track and intensity, a common occurrence when the model is initialized with a weaker vortex. Yesterday, we noted how the upper Midwest was yearning for a taste of summer over July 4th as an upper-level trough had brought cool, rainy weather. This cool weather has now reached parts of North Texas, with temperatures in the 70s and even 60s in some areas, a rarity for Texas in July. It is this potent upper-level trough of low pressure that is pulling Beryl northward. This shift is now evident in the NHC official forecast track error, which had been very accurate up to the forecasted landfall of Beryl on the Yucatan. However, the skill of Beryl's end game has shifted from points south of Brownsville, Texas, to now Matagorda Island National Wildlife Refuge, a shift of nearly 250 miles up the coastline in just 24 hours. This significant shift means Beryl will have more time over the open, warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, underscoring the significance of its movement.

This is Brian Tang, Univ. of Albany, forecast skill tracker looking at the NHC official forecast track error over the last six forecasts. The darkest tracks are the newest forecast, and the light blue tracks are the oldest forecast, which shows a northward shift in track over the past six forecasts of the NHC


From this morning's model runs, it's becoming more apparent that Beryl is likely to make landfall on the central Texas coast between Port O’Connor and Matagorda Bay, Texas. However, the uncertainty remains. A slight deviation south in the tracks could bring Beryl closer to the population center of Corpus Christi, Texas. In contrast, a northward wobble could bring it uncomfortably close to Galveston/Houston. The latest BMS iVision Verisk Respond forecast, a proprietary hurricane model, predicts a hurricane landfall 30 miles south along the Texas coastline from Freeport, Texas, as a category 1 hurricane. This underscores the need for local preparedness and vigilance on the potential impact of the central Texas coastline.

This is the BMS iVision Verisk Respond hurricane swath for Beryl, which shows Beryl will slowly intensify toward the central Texas coastline as a weak hurricane, with the strongest winds to the right side of the storm track.


Beryl’s Intensity

Although Beryl is struggling this morning, new convection is firing on the western side of the eroded low-level center. The tropical update yesterday failed to mention that there was a chance that Beryl would ingest dry air, which has allowed for Beryl to weaken along with southern wind shear. This has resulted in a situation where Beryl has to start over again as it tries to regain some intensity before a Texas landfall. Yesterday, more models suggested that Beryl would rapidly intensify towards the Texas coastline. This is less likely today, but Beryl has already provided several examples along its tracks with a surprise boost in intensity. So, despite how ragged Beryl looks this morning, the waters of the Gulf of Mexico are warm. Conditions are expected to be favorable tomorrow for an increase in intensity. With a more northward track, which means more time over warm water, there is plenty of opportunity for further strength. However, the limiting factor in intensification appears to be dry air at this time. Still, at this time, it appears the most likely scenario would be a high-end Category 1 hurricane with a landfall between Port O’Connor and Matagorda Bay, Texas.

The other thing to consider in Beryl right now is how Beryl evolves structurally – specifically, how its wind field changes for the storm surge threat to Texas. The latest guidance keeps Beryl small through landfall, with hurricane winds less than 25 miles to the northeast of the center track; this should limit the overall impacts of storm surge along the coastline, with a maximum of 3ft to 5ft expected to the northeast of Beryl final landfall location. The NHC is now running its storm surge inundation flood mapping, providing high-resolution guidance on the expected storm surge along the coastline.

Levi Cowan's forecast guidance from Tropical Tidbits shows that many of the current forecast model runs have landfall as tropical storms or weak hurricanes.


Beryl’s Insurance Industry loss

As experienced with Major Hurricane Idalia's landfall last year in the Big Bend region of Florida, landfall location matters immensely on the potential for insured loss. This is no different with Beryl, as insurance industry impacts will depend a lot on just how much Beryl intensifies and the exact landfall location. The Texas coast has large areas with low populations, and Beryl could slip through with only a few hundred million dollars in insurance industry loss. Suppose the wind core sweeps across Corpus Christi or edges close to the Houston area. In that case, the impact will easily top $1 billion, given its current intensity forecast. Regardless, having a landfall of only high-end category 1 or category 2 would still be a manageable event for the insurance industry, which would likely be a retained event by most carriers and have a very limited impact on the reinsurance industry given the current forecasts as of the morning of July 6th.

This BMS Tropical Update does NOT want to imply a remake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which started in similar areas to Beryl's current position on the table. However, Harvey was only forecasted at the time to be a tropical storm at landfall. Still, we know that Harvey exceeded the forecast expectation as a major category 4 hurricane at its first landfall along the Texas coastline. However, to prove the point about landfall location matters, Harvey made landfall north of Rockport, Texas, with its strongest winds impacting primarily the National Wildlife Refuge, with the overall insurance industry loss to the immediate landfall counties being $3.1B. This is in a very similar landfall location to Beryl's current forecast but as a much weaker forecasted landfall.

The expected landfall location north of Rockport, Texas, is no stranger to tropical storm or hurricane landfalls. Since 2003, four other named storms have impacted the general areas. Hurricane Claudette (2003) had an insured loss of $149M. Tropical Storm Erin (2007) didn’t cause widespread insured loss. Tropical Storm Bill (2015 )resulted in $75M in damages to the insurance industry. During the busy landfall year of 2020, Beta caused $128M of insured losses. These are provided to show generally, the current forecasted landfall areas have limited exposure to the insurance industry. Still, again, insurance industry losses could be much different if Beryl takes a track closer to Corpus Christi, Texas, or Freeport, Texas, which is still a possible forecast scenario.

Other things to keep in mind regarding Beryl's impact are the storm surges we already talked about, but the other water risk will be flooding rainfall. This will not be a Harvey-type rainfall, but 8 to 12 inches of rain are forecasted along Beryl's path into Texas to the west of the I-35 corridor. This is concerning as much of the region has had a wet start to the summer. If you remember, far east Texas has a potential dam failure at Livingston Dam as the Trinity River Authority works to shore up repairs before Beryl’s rain comes.


The strongest winds will be on Beryl's right side, as shown in the BMS iVision Verisk Respond wind swath in the image above. However, the insurance impacts on Louisiana will be negligible at this time.

Hopefully, the forecast holds, which would be welcome news to the insurance industry. However, Micheal, Laura, Ida, Harvey, Ian, & Idalia are why the insurance industry should still be on guard not to trust the type of circulation in the Gulf of Mexico. Still, as stated above, there is much less chance today of rapid intensification due to dry air and wind shear, but some deepening of Beryl is expected before landfall.