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Hurricane Beryl live updates: Man killed by fallen tree in Houston area
Hurricane Beryl is slamming Texas with powerful winds and torrential rain.
Hurricane Beryl strengthened to a Category 1 hurricane before making landfall along the Gulf Coast of Texas early Monday morning.
The earliest Category 5 Atlantic hurricane in history, the storm killed at least seven people in the Windward Islands before skirting south of Jamaica, shutting down communications, stranding tourists and delivering storm surge and flooding rain to the island.
Latest headlines:
Man killed by fallen tree in Houston area
A 53-year-old man was killed by a fallen tree while riding out Hurricane Beryl with his family, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.
The man, his wife and children were in a house in Atascocita in the Houston area when an oak tree fell on the roof, hitting the rafters, the sheriff said. The structure then fell on the man, killing him.
His wife and children were not hurt, the sheriff said Monday morning.
Up to 7 inches of rain pounds Houston, Galveston
Up to 7 inches of rain has pounded the Houston and Galveston areas so far and another 2 to 4 inches of rain is in the forecast for the next few hours.
Wind gusts have reached a whopping 94 mph in Freeport, Texas; 82 mph in Galveston Bay, Texas; and 69 mph at Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport.
Flood warnings and tornado warnings are in effect in the Houston area through Monday afternoon.
-ABC News’ Max Golemebo
Power outages fall to 130,000
About 130,000 customers in Texas were without power just before 7 a.m. on Monday, according to PowerOutage.us.
While the total outages fell, the number of customers in the storm’s path with outages rose. In Matagorda and Brazoria counties there were about 13,450 and 40,000 customers without power respectively, according to the tracking site.
-ABC News’ Amanda M. Morris
Wind gust of 92 mph recorded in Freeport, Texas
A wind gust of 92 mph was recorded at about 6 a.m. in Freeport, Texas, the National Weather Service said.
Maximum sustained winds at the time were about 80 mph, officials said. Category 1 storms generally have sustained wind speeds of 74 to 95 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Sustained wind speeds at Palacios Municipal, a coastal airport near where the storm made landfall, were at about 61 mph, officials said. Gusts at the airfield had climbed as high as 81 mph.
-ABC New’s Max Golembo
Beryl is closing in on Texas with up to 7 feet of storm surge forecast
The combination of storm surge and tide will cause normally dry areas near the Texas coast to be flooded by rising waters moving inland from the shoreline, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).
Officials are forecasting up to 7 feet of storm surge, above normal tide levels for Matagorda Bay and Port O’Connor to San Luis Pass.
The possible storm surge is forecast to reach up to 6 feet in Galveston Bay, officials said.
Surge-related flooding depends on the relative timing of the surge and the tidal cycle, and can vary greatly over short distances, according to the NHC.