ST. LOUIS — St. Louis is recovering from widespread flooding after the remnants of Hurricane Beryl on Tuesday. Numerous people on Facebook, however, claimed people needed to worry about the kind of water dumped on the region.
Multiple accounts on the social media site claimed the storm system that drenched the region dropped saltwater rain due to how long Beryl took to manifest in the Gulf of Mexico. The accounts also claimed the rain, because of its supposed high acidity, the rain could potentially damage grass lawns and even car paint.
Is any of this claim true? We reached out to the area's top experts to VERIFY.
The question
Did Hurricane Beryl's remnants drop saltwater rain on St. Louis?
Our sources
- 5 On Your Side Meteorologists
- The National Weather Service's St. Louis Office
The answer
No, saltwater rain didn't fall on St. Louis from Hurricane Beryl's remnants.
What we found
The claim makes logical sense: Hurricanes manifest in the ocean, which is made up of salt water, and bring rain to the mainland.
5 On Your Side Meteorologist Jim Castillo, however, said with his degree in Atmospheric Science and being a Certified Broadcast Meteorologist seal with the American Meteorological Society, he has never heard of hurricanes producing saltwater rain.
"I lived and worked in deep south Texas with tropical systems in the South Padre Island TV market and I never heard of anyone having paint coming off cars due to rain with a higher content of salt water," Castillo said.
The reality is a bit more complicated than the Facebook posters would believe.
Hurricanes aren't formed by the gathering of ocean water. Instead, they're formed by water vapor that evaporates from the ocean.
"As the water evaporates from the ocean, it leaves behind all the salt," the National Weather Service St. Louis Office said. "Much of the rain that we experience through the year comes from systems that draw moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. If this claim was true, we would get salt water rain most of the year."
We can VERIFY: No, Hurricane Beryl's remnants didn't drench St. Louis in saltwater.
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