Hurricane Beryl, which is threatening the Caribbean, has strengthened and has been upgraded to Category 5, the highest alert level, the American National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on X Tuesday, July 2 at 4:50 a.m. Paris time. Beryl “gains even more intensity”the NHC said in its first bulletin of the day, referring to a rare phenomenon that can cause buildings to collapse. “should still be close to major hurricane intensity”with winds of up to 270 km/h as it continues its trajectory to Jamaica, which it is expected to reach on Wednesday, the NHC added in its bulletin. Since 11 p.m. Monday, Jamaica has been under hurricane watch.
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 effects “potentially catastrophic”. Around 11 p.m. local time on Monday (5 a.m. in Paris), the NHC announced that Beryl had moved to Category 5, becoming the earliest of such intensity ever recorded in the Atlantic.
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It reportedly killed at least one person in the Windward Islands, the Caribbean islands between Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago. 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. Greenwich Mean Time) with destructive winds measured at up to 150 mph (240 km/h).
“In half an hour, Carriacou was razed”Grenadian Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said at a press conference on Monday, adding that he could not announce “with certainty that no one was injured or killed because of the hurricane”. He had earlier urged residents to take shelter and respect the curfew that had been imposed on the entire island. A meeting of the Caribbean Community, scheduled for this week on the island, has been postponed. Videos obtained by Agence France-Presse from St. George’s, the capital of Grenada, show torrential rain and strong winds.
Dominican Republic on red alert
US President Joe Biden and his team said on Monday “closely monitor the progress of Hurricane Beryl” and work “to ensure the safety of all American citizens in the region”.
Before hitting Grenada, strong winds had swept through Barbados, where gas stations were packed with motorists stocking up on fuel. Supermarkets and convenience stores were packed with shoppers stocking up on water, food and other essentials, while residents everywhere were seen nailing boards to their windows to protect homes.
After Beryl’s passage, Barbados seems “a lucky escape” said Home Affairs and Information Minister Wilfred Abrahams in a video.
In addition to Barbados, several countries are on hurricane watch, including Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Jamaica and Grenada. The French island of Martinique is on tropical storm alert, as are southern Haiti, Dominica and the island of Tobago, the second largest island and tourist attraction in the Trinidad and Tobago archipelago. “This island of Tobago is in a state of emergency” said the island’s chief executive, Farley Augustine, on Sunday, specifying that “All public and private schools were closed [lundi] and will remain so until further notice”In the Dominican Republic, authorities have placed the entire southern coast on red alert, according to a statement from the Emergency Operations Center, advising against going to beaches or crossing waterways.
In Martinique, the wind has strengthened since Sunday afternoon, with heavy showers, but not exceptional, according to Agence France-Presse correspondents on the ground. Some 10,000 customers have been without electricity in Martinique in different municipalities, according to EDF, adding that their teams are mobilized to find solutions to restore power for them.
An extraordinary hurricane season
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. “Only five major hurricanes (strength 3 or greater) have been recorded in the Atlantic before the first week of July. If Beryl does indeed become a major hurricane, it will be the sixth, and earliest, on record this far east.”hurricane expert Michael Lowry explained on X.
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After crossing the Caribbean, Beryl could reach the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, where the resorts of Cancun and Riviera Maya are located. “We are on alert with civil protection, the secretariat of defense and the navy (…) to monitor its trajectory”said Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. ” For now, [Béryl] does not pose a danger to Mexican territory”however, the National Weather Service estimated.
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The U.S. NHC expects the hurricane to remain powerful as it moves through the Caribbean, and has warned residents and local authorities in Dominica, Haiti, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and the rest of the northwestern Caribbean.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted an extraordinary season in late May, predicting the possibility of four to seven category 3 or higher hurricanes. The 2024 hurricane season is also announced by Météo-France as one of the “more intense” These forecasts are notably linked to the expected development of the La Niña meteorological phenomenon in the near future, as well as to the very high temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean, NOAA said.
Global warming is making extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, more frequent and more devastating.
