After making ashore on the island of Carriacou on Monday as the earliest wind of Category 4 power to shape in the Atlantic, fueled by report warm waters, Hurricane Beryl ripped off doors, windows, and roofs in homes across the southern Caribbean.
There were no immediate reports of probable deaths or injuries, and the region’s communications were generally hampered by the situation.
Streets from St. Lucia island south to Grenada were strewn with shoes, trees, downed power lines, and scores of other debris scattered by winds up to 150 mph ( 240 kph ), just shy of a Category 5 storm. The wind shattered fruit trees in half, killing cows that were lying in natural pastures as if they were sleeping, with homes made of wood and metal tipped dangerously near.
Vichelle Clark King surveyed her damaged factory in Bridgetown, the Barbadian money, as it was filled with sand and water.” Right now, I’m really heartbroken,” said Vichelle Clark King. Late on Monday afternoon, Beryl was also swiping the south of the Caribbean as a Category 1 wind made its way into the Caribbean Sea, heading southward and toward Mexico’s Yucatan coast.
Late Monday, Beryl’s winds increased to 155 mph ( 250 ) kilometers, on the brink of becoming a Category 5 storm.
Beryl was located about 575 miles (925 kilometers ) east- southeast of Isla Beata in the Dominican Republic and was moving west- northwest at 21 mph ( 33 kph ), with hurricane conditions possible on Jamaica Wednesday.
Jamaica was in the receiving of a cyclone notice, and a tropical storm warning was in effect for the entire southeastern coast of Hispaniola, an area shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
As it moves over the eastern Caribbean,” Beryl is expected to remain an incredibly risky big storms,” according to the National Hurricane Center.
Twenty years ago, Hurricane Ivan, which had a devastating impact on the east of the Caribbean, killed dozens of people in Grenada.
On Monday evening, authorities received “reports of disaster” from Carriacou and surrounding archipelago, said Terence Walters, Grenada’s federal catastrophe coordinator. Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said he would go to Carriacou as soon as it’s healthy, noting there’s been an “extensive” wind wave.
He claimed that after the doctor ceiling was damaged, Grenada officials had to move people to a lower floor.
” There is the possibility of even greater damage”, he told investigators. We must continue to pray, not what we can do.
In Barbados, Wilfred Abrahams, secretary of household affairs and knowledge, said drones- which are faster than crews fanning across the isle- may assess the damage once Beryl passes.
Hurricane specialist Sam Lillo claims that just six different times in Atlantic hurricane history have seen Beryl transform from a subtropical depression to a big hurricane in only 42 hours. This feat was accomplished only six times in the earliest date and just six different times in the region.
It also was the earliest Category 4 Atlantic storms on history, besting Hurricane Dennis, which became a Category 4 storm on July 8, 2005.
According to hurricane professional and storm surge professional Michael Lowry, Beryl amassed its power from record-warm waters that are hotter today than they would be at the height of hurricane season in September.
According to Philip Klotzbach, a researcher for Colorado State University’s hurricane research, Beryl also broke the record set in 1933 for the farthest east that a hurricane has formed in the tropical Atlantic in June.
On Sunday night, Beryl formed a new eye, or center, something that usually weakens a storm slightly as it grows larger in area. Experts say it’s now back to strengthening.
Jaswinderpal Parmar of Fresno, California, who was among the thousands who traveled to Barbados for Saturday’s Twenty20 World Cup cricket final, said he and his family were now stuck there with scores of other fans, their flights canceled on Sunday.
He claimed by phone that this was his first hurricane experience and that he and his family have been praying as well as receiving calls from concerned friends and family as far away as India.
” We could n’t sleep last night”, Parmar, 47, said.
Government officials issued a warning about a number of thunderstorms that resembled the hurricane’s path and had a 70 % chance of developing into a tropical depression as Beryl continued to engulf the southeast of the Caribbean.
” There’s always a concern when you have back- to- back storms”, Lowry said. ” If two storms move over the same area or nearby, the first storm weakens the infrastructure, so the secondary system does n’t need to be as strong to have serious impacts”.
Beryl is the second named storm in the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30. In northeast Mexico earlier this month, Tropical Storm Alberto made landfall and killed four people.
Between 17 and 25 named storms are expected to occur during the 2024 hurricane season, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There are up to 13 hurricanes and four major hurricanes predicted in the forecast.
Seven of the 14 named storms that are typically produced in the Atlantic hurricane season are hurricanes, and three of them are major hurricanes.
