Tropical Storm Bertha brought heavy surf and some flooding to southern Louisiana and Texas as it came ashore on the Gulf Coast for a second time Thursday, hours before weakening to a tropical depression and then fully dissipating.
The National Hurricane Center now shows no tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic.
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Bertha first grazed southern Louisiana on Wednesday in a slow crawl westward. The storm weakened as it made its second landfall about 75 miles northeast of Galveston, Texas, on Thursday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center said.
It remained a tropical storm for a few hours before being downgraded to a depression, marked by maximum sustained winds of 38 mph or less.
Thick clouds associated with Bertha prompted SpaceX to call off Thursday evening’s planned Starship launch from the southern tip of Texas. The space-skimming test flight was rescheduled for Friday, when the forecast called for clear skies.
No deaths or significant damage have been reported since Bertha formed Monday in the Gulf of Mexico south of the Florida Panhandle. The storm caused some coastal flooding as its center first struck land Wednesday in Louisiana southwest of New Orleans, but its heaviest rains stayed over the Gulf waters.
That rainfall south of the storm’s center began moving inland along Texas’ southeastern coast Thursday afternoon. Tropical storm force winds on Thursday extended as far as 140 miles (225 kilometers) from the storm’s center, the hurricane center said.
A tropical storm warning was discontinued by evening from Sargent, Texas, to the Vermilion and Cameron Parish line in Louisiana.
In Florida, storm damages a boardwalk and topples a Waffle House sign
Electrical outages across the Gulf Coast were minimal, according to the website poweroutage.us. Still, Bertha’s passage wasn’t harmless.
In Pensacola, Florida, officials closed an area around a storm-damaged beach boardwalk, Mayor D.C. Reeves said Thursday on Facebook. He posted a photo showing part of the boardwalk’s support structure ripped away and a fence damaged nearby.
Strong gales earlier in the week knocked over a Waffle House sign onto a car in Panama City Beach, Florida. Heavy surf and the threat of rip tides had prompted warnings at Gulf Coast beaches for swimmers to stay out of the water.
Bertha is the second tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season. Tropical Storm Arthur in June brought heavy rainfall to the southeastern U.S.
In the eastern Pacific Ocean, Hurricane Fausto churned far from land Thursday. The hurricane was more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph (130 kph).
The hurricane center said swells generated by Fausto could cause life-threatening surf and rip tides in parts of southern California.