Hurricane Beryl, which is sweeping several islands in the south-east of the Antilles with devastating rains and extreme winds, has gained in intensity, the American National Hurricane Center (NHC) indicated early Tuesday, a few hours after raising the phenomenon to Category 5, the highest on the weather scale.
Beryl is “still gaining intensity,” the NHC said in its first bulletin for Tuesday, and winds have strengthened to nearly 270 kilometers per hour.
On the Saffir-Simpson scale, used to describe the intensity of storms, category 5 is the strongest, corresponding to winds greater than 252 km/h, with “potentially catastrophic” effects.
Around 23:00 local time on Monday (03:00 GMT), the NHC announced that Beryl had moved to Category 5, becoming the earliest of such intensity ever recorded in the Atlantic.
It “is still expected to be close to the intensity of a major hurricane” with winds of up to 260 km/h, continuing its trajectory until Jamaica, which it should reach on Wednesday, the NHC warned in this penultimate bulletin.
Jamaica has been on hurricane watch since 9:00 p.m. GMT on Monday.
Before being upgraded to Category 5, the eye of the hurricane hit Carriacou, a small island in Grenada known for its beauty, on Monday at 11:10 a.m. local time (3:10 p.m. GMT) with destructive winds measured at up to 240 km/h.
“In half an hour, Carriacou was razed,” Grenadian Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell announced at a press briefing on Monday.
“We are not out of the woods yet,” he added. While there were no immediate reports of deaths, he said he could not say “with certainty that no one was injured or killed as a result of the hurricane.”
Videos obtained by AFP from St. George’s, the capital of Grenada, showed torrential rain and trees buffeted by violent gusts of wind.
Mr Mitchell said on social media that the government was working to get aid to Carriacou and the neighbouring island of Petite Martinique. “The state of emergency remains in effect. Stay home,” he urged on Facebook.
The neighboring archipelago of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines also recorded “catastrophic winds and a storm with potentially deadly effects,” according to the NHC.
– “Earliest” hurricane –
Beryl is the first hurricane of the season in the Atlantic.
A weather event of this scale is extremely rare so early in the hurricane season, which runs from early June to late November in the United States.
On Monday, US President Joe Biden and his team assured that they were “closely monitoring” the situation and working “to ensure the safety of all American citizens in the region.”
“Only five major hurricanes (of force 3 or greater) have been recorded in the Atlantic before the first week of July,” hurricane expert Michael Lowry told X. By becoming the sixth, Beryl is also “the earliest of those ever recorded this far east.”
Barbados appears to have escaped the worst, although high winds and rain continued to hit the territory, with no casualties so far.
It appears to have been a “narrow escape”, Interior and Information Minister Wilfred Abrahams said in a video, although gusty winds are still to be expected.
Homes and businesses were flooded and fishing boats damaged in Bridgetown.
On the French island of Martinique, which is on tropical storm alert, as are the south of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the wind has strengthened since Sunday afternoon, with occasional heavy showers, but not exceptional, according to AFP correspondents on the ground.
Some 10,000 customers were left without electricity in Martinique in various municipalities, according to EDF.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had predicted an extraordinary season in late May, predicting the possibility of four to seven Category 3 or higher hurricanes.
