One useless as Hurricane Beryl batters the Caribbean

At least one person has died after Hurricane Beryl battered several islands in the Caribbean, completely flattening the island of Carriacou in Grenada.

Beryl strengthened to Category 5 status late on Monday after its devastating winds ripped doors, windows and roofs off homes and left thousands without power across the southeastern Caribbean.

The super storm was still swiping the southeast Caribbean early on Tuesday with winds reaching 165mph, on a track heading just south of Jamaica and toward Mexico‘s Yucatan Peninsula by late Thursday, latest radar has revealed.

A hurricane warning remains in effect for Jamaica, and a tropical storm warning for the southern coast of Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) in Miami said.

Fluctuations in strength, and later a significant weakening, were forecast as the storm pushes further into the Caribbean in the coming days. 

Beryl made landfall on Carriacou on Monday as the earliest Category 4 storm in the Atlantic, then late in the day the NHC said its winds had increased to Category 5 strength. 

It reached Category 5 strength late on Monday and intensified further early on Tuesday morning to 165 mph winds.

Beryl was about 445 miles east-southeast of Isla Beata in the Dominican Republic on Tuesday morning and was moving west-northwest at 22 mph.

Fluctuations were likely but Beryl was expected to stay near major hurricane intensity as it moved into the central Caribbean and passed near Jamaica on Wednesday, according to forecasters at the NHC.

After that, significant weakening was expected.

On Monday afternoon, officials received ‘reports of devastation’ from Carriacou and surrounding islands, said Terence Walters, Grenada’s national disaster coordinator. 

Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said one person had died and he could not yet say if there were other fatalities because authorities had not been able to assess the situation on the islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique, where there were initial reports of major damage but communications were largely down.

‘We do hope there aren’t any other fatalities or any injuries,’ he said.

‘But bear in mind the challenge we have in Carriacou and Petite Martinique.’ 

Mitchell added that the government will send people first thing on Tuesday morning to evaluate the situation on the islands.

Mitchell said he would travel to Carriacou as soon as it’s safe, noting there has been an ‘extensive’ storm surge.

Grenada officials had to evacuate patients to a lower floor after hospital roof was damaged, he said.

‘There is the likelihood of even greater damage,’ he told reporters. ‘We have no choice but to continue to pray.’

Thousands were left without power after the historic super storm ripped through several islands on Monday.

Streets from St Lucia island south to Grenada were strewn with shoes, trees, downed power lines and other debris.

Banana trees were snapped in half and cows lay dead in green pastures with homes made of tin and plywood tilting precariously nearby.

‘Right now, I’m real heartbroken,’ said Vichelle Clark King as she surveyed her damaged shop in the Barbadian capital of Bridgetown that was filled with sand and water.

In Barbados, Wilfred Abrahams, minister of home affairs and information, said drones — which are faster than crews fanning across the island — would assess damage once Beryl passed.

Jaswinderpal Parmar of Fresno, California, who was among the thousands who travelled to Barbados for Saturday’s Twenty20 World Cup cricket final, said he and his family were now stuck there with scores of other fans after their flights cancelled on Sunday.

He said by phone that it is the first time he has experienced a hurricane — he and his family have been praying, as well as taking calls from concerned friends and family as far away as India.

‘We couldn’t sleep last night,’ Parmar said.

The last strong hurricane to hit the southeast Caribbean was Hurricane Ivan 20 years ago, which killed dozens of people in Grenada. 

Beryl’s explosive growth into an unprecedented early whopper of a storm shows the literal hot water the Atlantic and Caribbean are in right now and the kind of season ahead, experts have said.

Beryl smashed multiple records even before its major-hurricane-level winds approached land.  

The powerful storm is acting more like monsters that form in the peak of hurricane season thanks mostly to water temperatures as hot or hotter than the region normally gets in September, five hurricane experts told The Associated Press.

Beryl set the record for earliest Category 4 with winds of at least 130mph (209kilometers per hour) – the first-ever Category 4 in June.

 It also was the earliest storm to rapidly intensify with wind speeds jumping 63mph (102kph) in 24 hours, going from an unnamed depression to a Category 4 in 48 hours.

Late Monday, it strengthened to a Category 5, becoming the earliest hurricane of that strength observed in the Atlantic basin on record, and only the second Category 5 hurricane in July after Hurricane Emily in 2005, the NHC said. Category 5 storms have winds exceeding 157mph (250 kph).

Beryl is on an unusually southern path, especially for a major hurricane, experts have claimed.

‘Beryl is unprecedentedly strange,’ said Weather Underground co-founder Jeff Masters, a former government hurricane meteorologist who flew into storms. ‘It is so far outside the climatology that you look at it and you say, “How did this happen in June?”‘ 

Forecasters predicted months ago it was going to be a nasty year and now they are comparing it to record busy 1933 and deadly 2005 – the year of Katrina, Rita, Wilma and Dennis.

‘This is the type of storm that we expect this year, these outlier things that happen when and where they shouldn’t,’ University of Miami tropical weather researcher Brian McNoldy said. ‘Not only for things to form and intensify and reach higher intensities, but increase the likelihood of rapid intensification. All of that is just coming together right now, and this won’t be the last time.’

Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach called Beryl ‘a harbinger potentially of more interesting stuff coming down the pike. Not that Beryl isn’t interesting in and of itself, but even more potential threats and more – and not just a one off – maybe several of these kinds of storms coming down later.’

The water temperature around Beryl is about 2 to 3.6 degrees (1 to 2 degrees Celsius) above normal at 84 degrees (29 Celsius), which ‘is great if you are a hurricane,’ Klotzbach said.

Warm water acts as fuel for the thunderstorms and clouds that form hurricanes. The warmer the water and thus the air at the bottom of the storm, the better the chance it will rise higher in the atmosphere and create deeper thunderstorms, said the University at Albany’s Corbosiero.

Sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic and Caribbean ‘are above what the average September (peak season) temperature should be looking at the last 30-year average,’ Masters said.

It’s not just hot water at the surface that matters. The ocean heat content – which measures deeper water that storms need to keep powering up – is way beyond record levels for this time of year and at what the September peak should be, McNoldy said.

‘So when you get all that heat energy you can expect some fireworks,’ Masters said.

This year, there’s also a significant difference between water temperature and upper air temperature throughout the tropics.

The greater that difference is, the more likely it becomes that storms will form and get bigger, said MIT hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel. ‘The Atlantic relative to the rest of the tropics is as warm as I’ve seen,’ he said.

Atlantic waters have been unusually hot since March 2023 and record warm since April 2023. Klotzbach said a high pressure system that normally sets up cooling trade winds collapsed then and hasn’t returned.

Atmospheric scientist Kristen Corbosiero said scientists are debating what exactly climate change does to hurricanes, but have come to an agreement that it makes them more prone to rapidly intensifying, as Beryl did, and increases the strongest storms, like Beryl.

Emanuel said the slowing of Atlantic ocean currents, likely caused by climate change, may also be a factor in the warm water.

A brewing La Nina, which is a slight cooling of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide, also may be a factor. Experts say La Nina tends to depress high altitude crosswinds that decapitate hurricanes.

La Nina also usually means more hurricanes in the Atlantic and fewer in the Pacific. The Eastern Pacific had zero storms in May and June, something that’s only happened twice before, Klotzbach said.

Globally, this may be a below average year for tropical cyclones, except in the Atlantic.

On Sunday night, Beryl went through eyewall replacement, which usually weakens a storm as it forms a new center, Corbosiero said. But now the storm has regained its strength.

‘This is sort of our worst scenario,’ she said. ‘We’re starting early, some very severe storms. .. Unfortunately, it seems like it’s playing out the way we anticipated.’