Texas officials are telling coastal residents to expect power outages and flooding as Beryl was forecast to regain hurricane strength before making landfall.
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The outer bands of Beryl began lashing communities along the Texas shoreline on Sunday, bringing rain and intensifying winds.
The storm was projected to make landfall around the coastal town of Matagorda, about 161 kilometres south of Houston, but officials warned that the path could still change.
Nim Kidd, the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said residents along the coast should expect power outages as Beryl comes ashore.
Much of Texas' shoreline was under a hurricane warning and officials in several coastal counties urged tourists along the beach for the Fourth of the July holiday to leave.
The earliest storm to develop into a category five hurricane in the Atlantic, Beryl caused at least 11 deaths as it passed through the Caribbean on its way to Texas.
The storm ripped off doors, windows and roofs with devastating winds and storm surge fuelled by the Atlantic's record warmth.
"We're seeing the outer bands of Beryl approach the Texas coast now and the weather should be going downhill especially this afternoon and evening," Eric Blake, a senior hurricane specialist with the National Hurricane Centre, said Sunday morning.
"People should definitely be in their safe space by nightfall and we're expecting the hurricane to make landfall somewhere in the middle Texas coast overnight."
Beryl would be the tenth hurricane to hit Texas in July since 1851 and the fourth in the last 25 years, according to Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach.
Beryl's explosive growth into an unprecedented early whopper of a storm shows the literal hot water of the Atlantic and Caribbean, and what the Atlantic hurricane belt can expect for the rest of the storm season, experts said.
Texas officials warned people along the entire coastline to prepare for possible flooding, heavy rain and wind.
The hurricane warning extended from Baffin Bay, south of Corpus Christi, to Sargent, south of Houston.
Beryl lurked as another potential heavy rain event for Houston, where storms in recent months have knocked out power across the nation's fourth-largest city and flooded neighbourhoods.
A flash flood watch was in effect for a wide swath of the Texas coast, where forecasters expected Beryl to dump as much as 25.40cm of rain in some areas.
Potential storm surges between 1.22m - 1.83 m above ground level were forecast around Matagorda.
Australian Associated Press
