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Hurricane Beryl Pays Sharpstown a Visit, Leaving Us to Cook on Tuesday

Neighbors cleaning up a fallen tree limb on Jorine Drive in Sharpstown, 7/8/24

Updated on Tuesday, 7/9/24, 1:37 PM.

Probably like many readers, I woke up around 6:30 AM Monday to leaf-shaking gusts and a broken tree branch scratching my window. (It didn't break through, fortunately.)

When I flicked the light switch, nothing happened.

I didn't venture outside until just after 1 PM, when the winds had calmed to a mere twenty-something miles per hour. At my apartment complex next to Country Club Terrace 3, two dinner-plate-thick tree limbs blocked sidewalks.

Four more fallen branches created choke points along Jorine Drive, narrowing the street to one lane. In the driveway between two rows of townhomes, five or six neighbors were already gathering to hose the leaves off of the cement and carry another big branch off the street. Within fifteen minutes, their patch of Houston looked like Hurricane Beryl never touched it.

A downed fence and tree limbs along Jorine Drive and Jackwood

Two people in rain jackets were fishing in the drainage channel along the CenterPoint power line corridor near Gessner. The water, which feeds into Brays Bayou, was running at least six or seven feet higher than usual, but was still five or so feet below the top of the concrete banks. (I haven't heard reports of any widespread flooding in Sharpstown caused by Beryl.)

The high waters of the drainage channel (and the fishermen)

By 2 PM, more neighbors bustled around, checking their downed fences, raking twigs out of their yards, and piling debris on their curbs. One family debranched a thick limb with loppers, then carried it out of the path of traffic.

Fallen branches and cleanup work along Jorine Drive and Jackwood

Back at the apartment, electricity was still nonexistent, and inside temperatures were climbing to 80. Some neighbors invited me to stop by their generator-powered home, so that's why I finally have wi-fi.

Based on an informal survey I conducted on Facebook, it appears that most of Sharpstown was still without power around 5:00 and 6:00 PM. Twenty neighbors said they didn't have power. Three said they regained it around 6:00-6:30 PM, but nobody else has told me they have it back yet (as of 8:30 PM). Nobody said they never lost it.

Of course, outages are a Houston-wide problem. As of 8:25 PM, 1.9 million CenterPoint customers are still without power. That's most of the Houston region. CenterPoint is assessing the damage to power lines, but repairs may still take days. (You can keep tabs on outage numbers using this CenterPoint outage tracker, but it's not neighborhood-specific, sadly.)

If you have a generator, make sure that it's at least twenty feet away from your house and your carbon monoxide detectors are working.

If you don't have a generator, you're probably left without AC. That's never fun, but today (Monday) is mercifully cool compared to tomorrow. The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for Houston from 7:00 AM Tuesday to 7:00 AM Wednesday, forecasting high humidity and a heat index of up to 105 degrees.

Normally, during extreme heat events, the City of Houston makes libraries and multi-service centers (like the Southwest Multi-Service Center in Sharpstown) available to Houstonians as cooling centers. Some city facilities are still without power, but on Tuesday morning, the city released a list of cooling centers that will be open during the hot afternoon hours.

Read the Sharpener's latest update to see where you can cool off on Tuesday, 7/9/24. It also doesn't hurt to check Space City Weather for temperature, wind, and rain updates.