Folks living in the Caribbean, Yucatan Peninsula, and south Texas are cleaning up after Hurricane Beryl. Some are also mourning those who didn’t survive the storm.
I haven’t been personally affected by Beryl, although my in-laws are in Louisiana, next state over. They seem to have been away from the worst weather, for which I’m grateful.
This week I’ll take a quick look at what happened, what the storm doesn’t mean, and — as usual — whatever else comes to mind.
Death, Destruction, and a Power Outage
Folks in and near the Gulf of Mexico haven’t been having a good time.
“Hurricane Beryl: Power outage leaves over 2 million Texans in dark“
TOI World Desk / TIMESOFINDIA.COM (July 8, 2024)“Hurricane Beryl struck Texas early Monday as a Category 1 storm and not only brought heavy rains … but also left over 1.9 million homes and businesses in the Greater Houston area without power….”
By Monday evening, the storm had killed more than a dozen folks. Nearly three million in Texas were without power, not a trivial issue during a Texas summer.
By one educated guess, rebuilding after Beryl will cost upwards of $6,000,000,000.
A fair chunk of that will be in Texas, since the storm went past Houston. But I strongly suspect that places like Saint Vincent and the Grenadines will feel the cost more.
The good — or less-dreadful, at any rate — news for that island nation is that 10% of its buildings weren’t destroyed last week. It’s a bit like the 2021 La Soufrière eruption’s ‘good news’: Saint Vincent’s air and sea ports were at the other end of the island, but with the COVID-19 pandemic —1
I don’t think anyone’s feeling happy about Beryl. The known extent of loss and damage will just get bigger, as folks clear debris and take stock of their situations.
| Beryl Impact by Country/Territory (as of July 8, 2024) | Deaths | Other Reported Effects |
|---|---|---|
| Barbados | 0 | |
| Cayman Islands | 0 | |
| Cuba | 0 | |
| Dominican Republic | 0 | 89 people displaced |
| Grenada | 3 | |
| Haiti | 0 | |
| Jamaica | 3 | 1 person missing |
| Martinique | 0 | |
| Mexico | 0 | 5 rescued from flood |
| Saint Lucia | 0 | |
| Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | 3 | 90% of buildings damaged or destroyed |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 0 | |
| United States | 5 | 2.7 million people lost power |
| Venezuela | 3 | 5 people missing |
| Total | 17 |
Disasters and Focused Wrath: No Noticeable Correlation
So far, it doesn’t look like Hurricane Beryl has been worse than Katrina or Harvey, either in terms of deaths or property damage.
And I haven’t run across either an equivalent of the 1969 Camille hurricane party story, or a righteous rant like “Katrina: God’s Judgment on America”: posted anonymously in 2005, denouncing gambling and decadence.
With about a third of a billion people living here, and my country’s cultural history, I’d be surprised if someone hasn’t rung the changes on the our old ‘God Doth Wrathfully Smite Sinners’ theme.
Or done the same with our more up-to-date ‘Nature Rises in Wrath and We are Doomed’ attitude.
Each of those conventional explanations for calamities appeal, apparently, to some; but not me. Possibly because I don’t see strong correlation between folks who are behaving badly, and those who get hurt or killed in high-profile disasters.2
The Siloam Reminder
Someone whose opinion I value said that bad things happen. And when they do, it’s a reminder that straightening out my own life is prudent.
“At that time some people who were present there told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices.
“He said to them in reply, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?
“By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!
“Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?
“By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!'”
(Luke 13:1–5)
That doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, or fill me with (self?) righteous confidence, but I think it makes sense. Death happens. Then I go through my particular judgment: a final performance review (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1021-1022)
I know that I’m not perfectly perfect, and that’s another topic.
Perspectives
Hurricane Beryl formed earlier than any other recorded Category 5 Atlantic Hurricane.
It’s only the second one to form in July. They usually come later in the season.
Most of the biggest, worst, and most destructive hurricanes seem to have happened in the last few decades.
Taking my cue from a famous poet — or my country’s perennial doomsayers — I could cut loose with a new-and-improved version of this meditation on World War I, the Irish War of Independence, and the Trojan War —
“…Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity….”
(The Second Coming“, W. B. Yeats (1919) via Wikipedia)
But I won’t.
Before I start talking about tropical cyclones and weather satellites, I’d better explain something.
I’m about as sure as I can be that Earth’s climate is changing, has been changing, and will continue changing.
Although I think Earth’s climate would keep changing even if we had continued living in ye good olde days of cholera and famine, I also think we’re affecting climate and weather.
With about 8,000,000,000 neighbors, many of us living in or near cities, I don’t see how we could avoid make a difference in how Earth’s air and water run through their cycles.
But I do not think we are doomed.
On the other hand, I do think that places like Korea, Japan, Spain, and Malta, will be having a rough time within the next few decades; no matter what the weather is like.
I don’t mind living in a country with a slowly growing population. Although it looks like 22nd century America will be less melanin-deficient.3 And that’s yet another topic.
It’s a Changing World
Hurricanes seem to have gotten much more common over the last few decades.
There was another sharp uptick, apparently, starting around 1500. I figure that’s because Columbus stumbled on what we call the Americas in 1492. After that, just about every European ruler and merchant was trying to get a piece of the trans-Atlantic action.
Some expeditions both ran into massive storms and survived.
Since knowing about storms correlates with survival, folks started keeping records of Atlantic weather, including hurricanes: looking for patterns.
Fast-forward to the 1960s, when the first weather satellites went online. These days, I can get an almost real-time look at weather from geosynchronous satellites.
This is not the world I grew up in. I think that’s a good thing in many ways. Partly because now we can see hurricanes forming, giving folks time to get out of the way or take shelter.
I figure our weather satellites and other new tech is why we have more recorded hurricanes now, but lower death tolls.
That makes more sense to me than imagining that Poseidon sent Beryl as punishment for having his statue in a lobby of the UN General Assembly Building. Good grief. That is crazy on so many levels.
Now, about hurricanes: our name for tropical cyclones in the Atlantic.
A tropical cyclone starts when humid air, warm seawater, and several other factors get together.4
So, yes: warmer tropical seawater will lead to more tropical cyclones. But at least some of the apparent increase in hurricane activity since my youth is due to our having better tech. We’re noticing and tracking more of the things.
Days, Millennia, and Planning Ahead
Recapping: Hurricane Beryl broke several records. It caused death and destruction in the Caribbean, the Yucatan Peninsula, and Texas.
Beryl was downgraded to “tropical storm” Monday afternoon, July 8, 2024, By Wednesday it was moving through the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, heading for Ontario.
Like all hurricanes these days, Beryl was tracked from the time it formed.
Americans started an official Atlantic tropical cyclone record in 1851, but folks were jotting down details of major storms long before that.
For example, there’s the one that hit Haining in 251 A.D., just south of the Yangtze delta. Another killed around 10,000 folks in the Hong Kong area in 957.
Then there’s the new field of paleotempestology: a mouthful that’s our name for the study of tropical cyclones, using geological data and historical records. This helps folks like insurance underwriters, who need to know about an area’s storm history.
So far, researchers have charted out the western North Atlantic Ocean’s most recent eight millennia of tropical cyclone activity. One thing they’ve learned is that the average rate at which major storms hit any given spot — changes.
It looks like the region from New York to Puerto Rico was stormier than usual from 2,000 to 1,100 years ago. Then, starting 1,000 years back, that area and the Gulf Coast have seen comparatively few big storms.5
That’s cold comfort for folks who experienced Beryl.
But I think there’s some wisdom in remembering that the last few days, months, centuries, or millennia, aren’t all there is to humanity’s long story.
I also think that learning what the weather has been like recently is a good idea. It’ll be an even better idea, if we decide to use that knowledge. And plan ahead.
I’ve talked about storms, climate, and making sense, before:
- “Climate, Neighbors, Bogeymen and Responsibility”
(November 5, 2022) - “Green Sahara, Environmental and Climate News”
(July 30, 2022) - “Cyclone Tauktae, COVID-19 and the Siloam Lesson”
(May 22, 2021) - “Disasters, Deaths, Decisions”
(September 17, 2018) - “Harvey Over Texas”
(August 30, 2017)
1 An island nation, two disasters, and an American state:
- Wikipedia
2 Hurricanes, costs and culture:
- Wikipedia
- Making sense is an option
3 Weather, people, and history:
- Wikipedia
- Climate system
- Demographics of the world
- Doomsayer
- Hurricane Beryl
- Irish War of Independence
- Late Bronze Age collapse (a cataclysm we nearly forgot: a few really bad years, ca. 1200 B.C.)
- List of costliest Atlantic hurricanes
- List of Southern Hemisphere tropical cyclone seasons
- Trojan War (a legendary war, ca. 1200 B.C., give or take a century; ended 1184 BC, according to ancient Greek traditions)
- Tropical cyclone
- Tropical cyclones by year
- Troy (legendary city that isn’t there any more)
- Typhoon
- United States (last updated: July 3, 2024)
CIA World Factbook - “Japan’s birth rate falls to a record low as the number of marriages also drops”
AP (June 5, 2024) - “South Korea’s birth rate is so low, the president wants to create a ministry to tackle it”
Jessie Yeung, Alex Stambaugh, Yoonjung Seo, CNN (May 9, 2024) - “Fertility statistics”
European Commission (data extracted in February 2024, planned article update: March 2025) - My take on something major that’s seldom in headlines
- Wikipedia
- Age of Discovery (AKA Age of Exploration)
- Atlantic hurricane reanalysis project
- Christopher Columbus
- El Niño–Southern Oscillation (AKA ENSO: “…a global climate phenomenon that emerges from variations in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical Pacific Ocean….”)
- List of costliest Atlantic hurricanes
- List of Atlantic hurricane records
- List of Southern Hemisphere tropical cyclone seasons
- Madden-Julian oscillation (AKA MJO: “…the largest element of the intraseasonal (30- to 90-day) variability in the tropical atmosphere. It was discovered in 1971….”
- Poseidon
- Recharge oscillator (this theory may explain ENSO’s behavior)
- Tropical cyclogenesis (how tropical cyclones form and grow)
- Tropical cyclone
- Tropical cyclones by year
- Tropical cyclone forecasting
- Typhoon
- United Nations General Assembly Building
- Voyages of Christopher Columbus
- “Poseidon of Artemision”
United Nations Gifts - What is the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon?”
Ocean Facts, National Ocean Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
5 History, HURDAT, and a new scientific field:
- Wikipedia
- 1737 Calcutta cyclone (AKA Hooghly River cyclone of 1737, Great Bengal cyclone of 1737; the first super cyclone on record in North Indian Ocean)
- 1851 Atlantic hurricane season (first Atlantic hurricane season to be included in the official Atlantic tropical cyclone record: NOAA NHC HURDAT2 Atlantic Hurricane Catalog)
- 1887 Atlantic hurricane season (the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record at the time)
- 1899 Atlantic hurricane season (included the longest-lasting tropical cyclone in the Atlantic basin on record)
- 1970 Bhola cyclone (AKA 1970 Bhola cyclone, the deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded)
- Atlantic hurricane reanalysis project (started around 2000 to update and correct HURDAT)
- Haining
- Hong Kong
- Hurricane Beryl
- List of Pacific typhoons before 1850
- Lower Peninsula of Michigan
- Paleotempestology (studying past tropical cyclone activity, using geological proxies and historical documentary records)
- Tropical cyclones by year
- Yangtze
- “Typhoons Saved 13th Century Japan From Invasion”
Rachel Nuwer, Smithsonian Magazine (December 10, 2014) - NHC Data Archive
National Hurricane Center and Central Pacific Hurricane Center - NOAA NHC HURDAT2 Atlantic Hurricane Catalog
Earth Engine Data Catalog, developers.google.com
