Hurricane Beryl: Maximum Wind Messaging Challenges and the Need for Wind Gust Exceedance Graphics

Hurricane Beryl made landfall near Matagorda, Texas, as a category one hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind scale during the early morning hours of July 8th, 2024. Beryl intensified to a hurricane just five hours before landfall, and the hurricane continued to intensify at landfall, reaching peak maximum sustained winds of 80 mph. Unfortunately, the inland track of Beryl was to the northeast across the highly populated Houston, Texas metropolitan area, with both of the major airports in Houston (Bush Intercontinental and Hobby) observing hurricane force wind gusts in excess of 80 mph. These wind gusts resulted in widespread power outages across the area, with a total of nearly 3 million people losing power due to downed power lines and downed trees on homes and power lines across southeast Texas.

Tropical cyclone watches and warnings are based on the forecast of one-minute sustained wind speeds of 39-73 mph for tropical storm and 74 mph or greater for hurricane conditions. Wind speed point probabilities are produced for these thresholds, as well as for strong tropical storm wind speeds (58 mph). These probabilities are used to communicate the risk of these key thresholds to decision makers, the media, and the public. It became apparent during Beryl that decision makers would benefit from probabilistic wind gust information, especially for hurricane force wind gusts. In this case, inland locations were appropriately under a tropical storm warning for sustained tropical storm force winds, but frequent gusts above hurricane force were observed and produced significant damage.

The National Weather Service is in the test and evaluation stage of a new tropical cyclone wind speed probability model. This new model will have increased resolution, a better depiction of the radius of maximum winds, as well as increased coastline resolution. Research is ongoing for the creation of new products like wind gust exceedance graphics which can provide a realistic worst case scenario for the maximum expected winds. Using Beryl as a case study, this presentation will examine how the new model would have performed, and what the impact of a 10% exceedance wind gust product might have had concerning communicating the wind threat to decision makers.