An Analysis of the Hurricane Beryl Inland Tornado Outbreak and the Multifaceted and Collaborative Post-Storm Survey Efforts

In the early morning hours of Monday, July 8th, 2024, Beryl made landfall near Matagorda, Texas as a category one hurricane. Beryl was moving roughly north at landfall, but quickly turned more to the northeast as it moved inland through East Texas and toward the Ark-La-Tex throughout the remainder of July 8th. Previous studies have shown that the northeast quadrant (with respect to tropical cyclone movement) is associated with the highest inland tornado threat with regard to landfalling tropical cyclones. In this case, Beryl’s inland tornado production in the favored northeast quadrant was considerable on July 8th. Forty-three National Weather Service (NWS)-surveyed and verified tornadoes occurred over this time span, many of which departed from the “brief and weak” narrative typically ascribed to the inland tornado threat associated with landfalling tropical cyclones. For example, one of the strong (EF-2) and long-tracked (greater than 32 kilometers) tornadoes produced a direct fatality and several injuries.

Scores of tornadoes occurring in a day in a concentrated geographical area necessitated a massive NWS storm survey effort to properly document the event for the scientific record. Traditional NWS survey efforts of documenting damage from the ground, went on for nearly two weeks following the day of the outbreak. As is often the case in this portion of the United States, the traditional survey process was hindered by limited road and ground access in affected rural areas. To address these limitations, an array of observational datasets were gathered and used to inform on details of tornado paths. These datasets included video from “storm chasers”, drone imagery, aerial imagery from the Civil Air Patrol, and high resolution imagery from polar orbiting satellites. Combining as much of this data and imagery as possible into a GIS format, such that it could be entered into the NWS’s Damage Assessment Toolkit, allowed for holistic tornado assessments in a collaborative manner. This presentation will detail how this methodology has been expanding the accuracy and efficacy of the NWS Storm Survey process for the benefit of the scientific record, while also comparing and contrasting this inland tornado outbreak to others in the CONUS over the last several decades.