Tropical Storm Beta is moving into inland Texas with
heavy rainfall
and
maximum sustained winds of 40 miles per hour.
The storm made landfall Monday night on the upper coast of the state, near Matagorda Bay (5 miles north of Port O'Connor), the National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned.
The phenomenon is causing
heavy rains
throughout the coastal area of the state.
Two people walk on the beach in Galveston, Texas, before Beta makes landfall nearby.Zeng Jingning / China News Service via Getty Images
At least
10 million people
are on alert for the storm, which has already caused flooding in parts of the Texas coast, such as the Houston area.
There is a tropical storm watch from Port Aransas, Texas, to Sabine Pass, on the Texas-Louisiana border.
In their latest update, the NHC said they expect
Beta to come to a halt in the interior of Texas this Tuesday,
but then it will begin to move slowly east-northeast tonight.
[How and when to prepare for a hurricane or tropical storm]
Beta, moving slowly - at a speed of 3 miles per hour - threatens to produce
rain accumulations of between 5 and 10 inches
, with isolated totals of up to 15, from the middle coast of Texas to southeastern Louisiana.
The storm is 45 miles west-northwest of Matagorda Bay and 35 miles north-northwest of Port O'Connor.
Between one and two tornadoes
are also expected
Tuesday
near the mid-to-upper coast of Texas or southwest Louisiana.
The storm surge generated by the combination of Beta and a cold front over the northern Gulf of Mexico will continue along the coast of both states for the next few days.
These swells are likely to cause "life threatening" ocean currents.
Experts assured residents that Beta was not expected to cause damage like Hurricane Harvey or Tropical Storm Imelda.
Harvey in 2017 dumped more than 50 inches of rain on Houston, causing $ 125 billion in damage in Texas.
Imelda, which struck southeast Texas last year, was one of the wettest cyclones on record.
[The hurricane season was expected to be intense: it will be even worse]
In Galveston, an island city southeast of Houston, some
streets
were already
flooded
by rising tides and part of a
popular fishing pier collapsed
due to strong waves.
Streets were also flooded in Rockport, located northeast of Corpus Christi.
On Monday, Governor Greg Abbott issued a
disaster declaration for 29 Texas counties
before Beta's arrival.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency.
In an
unusually active Atlantic hurricane season
, meteorologists ran out of letters of the traditional alphabet to name storms before Friday and had to turn to the Greek alphabet for the second time since the 1950s.
With information from AP and NHC.
