In today’s Quickcast:
Beryl made landfall early Monday morning as a hurricane, slamming into the Gulf Coast of Texas between Galveston and Corpus Christi — just south of Houston — as a tumultuous Category 1 storm.
By late morning, power outages across Texas topped 2.5 million homes and businesses, according to the tracking site PowerOutage.us, and that number continued to climb during the afternoon. Around 3,400 flights were canceled or delayed Monday, many originating or ending in Texas airports, as airlines began feeling the impacts of the hurricane that has now weakened to a tropical storm.
Even after it was downgraded from a hurricane, Beryl continued to tear through Texas with maximum wind speeds near 70 mph, and higher gusts, before dropping to 60 mph as the afternoon progressed. Maximum sustained winds need to be at least 74 mph for a storm to be considered a hurricane.
At least two deaths have been reported in Texas amid the storm. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said Monday morning a man was dead after a tree fell on a home in Atascocita, which is in the Houston area. In a separate incident, Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said a tree fell through the roof of a home, killing a 74-year-old woman.
Months after a disastrous first attempt caused a traffic nightmare, work is currently underway on the Rickenbacker Causeway flyover bridge.
Last April, the road work there left drivers stranded on the causeway for hours.
"We had a complete closure in northbound and southbound in one phase," said Mario Cabrera, the Florida Department of Transportation District 6 Construction Engineer. "We had massive vehicular traffic that Sunday evening."
Cabrera says they didn’t anticipate the bottleneck on April 14th when FDOT rerouted drivers coming off the Rickenbacker Causeway from heading westbound on the flyover bridge.
This time around, the FDOT is hoping it will be different. Since the April snafu, they’ve gone door to door in Key Biscayne advising residents of their new plan, they increased signage and did a big social media push to get the word out.
Family and friends gathered Monday to celebrate the life of Ethan Lawrence who died eight days ago after he was struck by lightning in a Davie park.
Among the mourners was running coach Elliott Mason who counseled Lawrence.
"There was a race on July 4th. There was a moment of silence in observance of his passing," he said.
Lawrence, a competitive runner, died suddenly on June 30th while running in Vista View Park. A witness saw him fall to the ground. Lightning was reported in the area around 10:20 a.m.
According to the Broward County Parks Department, the park does have lightning predictors that activate when lightning may hit. The county said they are 97% accurate. A park worker confirmed that the alarms went off moments after Lawrence collapsed. The park had been closed for weather related safety reasons at the time of the incident.
Catch the Quickcast with Najahe Sherman weekdays at 4PM ET streaming on the CBS Miami app and CBSMiami.com
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