Arkansas Storm Team Weather Blog: Beryl is coming to the Natural State
The weather in Arkansas is about to get tropical! Not just because we are hot and humid, but because we are in the path of Tropical Storm Beryl!
The latest forecast from the National Hurricane Center has Beryl making landfall as a category 1 hurricane somewhere between Corpus Christi and Houston Texas. Then it is forecast to weaken into a tropical depression and turn to the northeast, directly towards Arkansas!
By the time Beryl gets to the Natural State, it will be much weaker with just 25 mph sustained winds. This doesn’t mean we won’t see substantial impacts…
Parts of Arkansas could receive over 5″ of rainfall leading to localized flooding. Flooding will be possible, but I don’t think it will be our biggest impact.
Whenever the remnants of a tropical system move over land, we are always watching for the risk of tornadoes. During the summer tornadoes are very unlikely in Arkansas, this is because the jet stream is too far north and the atmosphere doesn’t have enough wind shear to support tornadoes. The remnants of a tropical system bring enough wind shear to the atmosphere to support spin-up tornadoes. This was seen back in 2020 when the remnants of Hurricane Laura moved over Arkansas.
8 tornadoes spawned from Laura. Most of them were weak EF-0 and EF-1s, but there was an EF-2 that touched down in Randolph County.
Beryl is not expected to be as strong as Laura. Laura was a tropical storm with sustained winds of more than 40 mph when it was over Arkansas. Beryl will be much weaker, but it still could bring the threat of severe weather.
Speak of Laura, that was the last time the remnants of a tropical system impacted Arkansas. In fact, in 2020 there were two tropical systems that moved directly over us, Tropical Storm Cristobal and Hurricane Laura. It was almost three with Hurricane Delta just missing to our southeast. 2020 was definitely an outlier, as it is pretty rare to see the remnants of a tropical system move over Arkansas.
2020 was the most active hurricane season ever. According to the National Hurricane Center and how this season has already started, this season could challenge it!
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