Hurricane Beryl brought heavy rain, widespread flooding and powerful winds across southeast Texas, knocking out power for roughly 2.7 million customers in the state and killing at least seven people as of Tuesday morning, Harris County officials confirmed.
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The deadly Category 1 hurricane weakened into a tropical storm and was then downgraded to a tropical depression on Tuesday, but the impacts on the state and its logistics operations have lingered.
Port Houston , the largest port in Texas and the fifth largest by annual container traffic in the U.S., remains closed. According to a notice, the port has continued to assess and repair damage and will send an update by 4 p.m. Central Time Tuesday if there are any further disruptions to operations for Wednesday.
In a Sunday analysis, supply chain visibility platform Project44 said it expected to see impacts in the vessel volume, dwell times and berthing times of ports throughout Texas due to the closures, “particularly at the Port of Houston, potentially affecting various industries and exacerbating challenges during the peak shipping season for holiday goods.”
Project44 said that more than 250 vessels were close to the path of Beryl.
Jon Davis, chief meteorologist at Everstream Analytics , told Sourcing Journal on Monday that the hurricane-related delayed reopenings would likely be a “two-to-three-day situation,” saying that he expected ports throughout the state “should resume operations [Tuesday], or at the latest, on Wednesday.”
Galveston Harbor and port operations will also remain closed as the port and federal agencies assess the impact of Beryl, the port said in a post on X. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expects to begin surveying federal portions of the waterways on Tuesday.
The Port of Corpus Christi reported no significant impact and reopened for normal operations on Tuesday. The port’s channel reopened after the U.S. Coast Guard rescinded the port condition “Zulu” for the waterway. While Zulu was in place, no vessels could enter or transit through the port without the permission of the Coast Guard.
The Corpus Christi opening appears to bring good news for the remaining ports as they determine whether they should reopen.
On the land-based logistics front, Maersk reported that a number of its Houston-based facilities and teams have been impacted by power loss. In addition, some local trucking operations facilities are without power as well, but expect to resume operations once Port Houston’s terminal gates open.
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Less-than-truckload (LTL) services provider Estes Express Lines said its terminals in Houston and West Houston remain closed as of Tuesday, while its Corpus Christi and Temple facilities were operating under limited service. Rival trucking firm Old Dominion says it is operating at 60 percent in South Houston, with moderate service delays, and at 30 percent in Houston and North Houston.
After shuttering its Pearland Intermodal Facility in Houston on Sunday, BNSF Railway reiterated late Monday that the terminal will be closed “until it is safe to resume operations.”
A Union Pacific representative told Sourcing Journal that the railroad is now operating again in the previously suspended 340-mile stretch between Brownsville and Angleton, Texas.
“Our team is working to finish clearing the remaining tree debris from the tracks,” said the UP rep. “With electricity still out in many locations, we’re deploying generators in the field in order to restore signals so that operations can resume.”
As of 7 p.m. Monday, both Houston airports, William P. Hobby Airport and George Bush Intercontinental Airport, had restored full operations. Hundreds of flights were cancelled Monday morning as Beryl made landfall on the shoreline.
Davis said he started advising clients to adjust their logistics operations nearly two weeks ago, when Beryl was crossing the Atlantic toward the Caribbean, since Everstream works with companies located in, or have exposure in, the region.
“The rapid intensification of Beryl both in the Atlantic and in the Caribbean due to the extremely warm ocean temperatures was record breaking and an item of concern; this storm has consistently had a ‘history,’” Davis said. “Since this storm consistently overperformed computer guidance, this was one of the messages—impacts will likely be more significant than the computer guidance forecast. That was the case in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and parts of Texas today.”
Davis noted Monday that no infrastructure damage had initially been expected from the storm, but the hurricane did end up having a wider impact than expected due to storm surge flooding and flash flooding, according to CenterPoint Energy.
CenterPoint Energy, which serves as the primary electricity provider of the Houston metropolitan area, noted in a press release that the hurricane “veered off the originally expected course and more heavily impacted the company’s customers, systems and infrastructure than previously anticipated.” As of Tuesday morning, CenterPoint said 1.78 million people were still without power.
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