How Did Hurricane Beryl Turn Texas Coastal Waters Brown?

Hurricane Beryl slammed into Texas pretty hard and did more than mess up property and flood areas of Texas ... it also kinda jacked up the Gulf of Mexico.

Hurricane Beryl ravaged Texas causing floods, power outages and damages that may cost insurers in the USA $2.7 billion dollars.

The storm also completely changed the color of the water off the Texas coast in the Gulf Of Mexico. Keep reading to find out how and why the water went from ocean blue to a toxic looking dark brown.

Hurricane Beryl was a category 1 storm by the time it got to Texas and was a pretty harsh wake up call for the Houston area which hasn't taken a direct hit from a hurricane in decades. The damage, blackouts and other issues pretty much wrecked Houston and experts are worried what will happen if the city faces a category 4 or 5 storm.

One interesting, less damaging and deadly, thing Hurricane Beryl did was to change the color of the water off the Texas coast from blue to a nasty brown. Luckily, that's not a big deal. It's not dangerous to be in and is already returning to normal. Kinda freaked everybody out though.

Why Did The Water In The Gulf Turn Brown?

That actually had to do with the direction the storm came in from. Houston city manager Brian Maxwell said most storms approach from the southeast but Beryl came in from the southwest so it stirred up a lot of sediment deposited by the Brazos river.

How Did The Water In The Gulf Turn Brown?

The Brazos always dumps tons of sediment into the Gulf ...

We’re experiencing a little bit more of that right now, but there’s nothing unsafe about the water; it’s just a lot of sand and sediment that’s been churned up in it,” Maxwell added. “That, combined with all the flooding we’ve had upriver this year already, has dumped a lot of that sediment into the gulf, so you’re seeing a little bit more of that now. CHRON

Mystery solved!