Drone images reveal Hurricane Beryl’s impact on Texas coast – Houston Public Media
Parts of Texas' shoreline were unrecognizable after Hurricane Beryl wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast, destroyed dunes and immediately caused the shore to become largely inaccessible, new drone imagery shows.
University of Houston researchers captured images along the shoreline near Galveston and Matagorda Bay before and after the devastating storm made landfall on July 8 . The images show a washed-out beachfront with damaged dunes.
Large channels immediately opened up along the shoreline in some places after the storm surge retreated.
Geologists with the university are conducting an environmental study on Beryl's effects and working to calculate the amount of land along the Texas coast that eroded between May and July this year.
Sargent, a coastal Texas city between Matagorda and Galveston, sustained the most damage from Hurricane Beryl, Shuhab Khan, a geology professor working on the study, said in a statement, according to the university . That's where the hurricane came ashore.
"Sargent Island experienced the most significant impact and is unrecognizable," Khan said. "The flooding, overwash and scarping caused by Beryl wiped out nearly all the dunes and left the area virtually inaccessible."
He said the data being collected by researchers at the university will help to quantify erosion along the coast, track the land's recovery process, and improve predictive models for storm damage.
"Our ongoing research demonstrates that restored dunes along the Texas coast are vulnerable to major storms," Khan said. "It emphasizes the need for adaptive, proactive dune management and regular monitoring to assess the durability of these restoration efforts."
Follett's Island in Brazoria County can also be seen with severe damage from imagery captured by Khan's team of researchers.
Follett's had a restored dune system, but the majority of its dune system was washed away, leaving the area barren.
University of Houston researchers conducted a similar study and lidar surveying after Hurricane Harvey in 2017 that found about 60 meters of erosion in areas along the state's coast, like Rockport. On average, land along the Texas coasts erodes at about 1.27 meters per year.
The researchers are still working to determine how much land subsided immediately after Hurricane Beryl.
The research was funded by the Texas General Land Office and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It shows the damaging effects in Galveston, Follett's Island, Matagorda, Mustang Island, North Padre Island and Sargent Island.
