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Hurricane Beryl struck the Windward Islands on Monday as an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm, bringing devastating winds, torrential rains and life-threatening storm surge.
Beryl made landfall on the Caribbean island of Carriacou, Grenada, just after 11 a.m. EDT with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, making it the most powerful hurricane ever to pass through the Grenadines, according to NOAA data going back to 1851.
“There are widespread reports of destruction and devastation on the islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique,” Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said at a press conference on Monday. “Within 30 minutes, Carriacou was completely destroyed.”
Mitchell said there were no immediate reports of casualties but warned that could change.
“You have to understand the ferocity and the intensity of the hurricane, so we’re not out of the woods yet,” he said. “You can’t say for sure that there haven’t been injuries or that there hasn’t been loss of life as a result of the hurricane.”
The storm knocked out electricity to the islands. Neila K. Etienne, spokesperson for the Office of the Prime Minister of Grenada, told CNN on Monday that about 95% of the island of Grenada has lost power as a result of Hurricane Beryl. Communications were cut off across Grenada, leaving some people without internet access, Etienne explained.
He added that all schools and businesses, including the airport, have been closed and only hospitals and state police are currently operating. The airport reported sustained winds of 92 mph, with gusts of 121 mph, on Monday afternoon, according to the National Hurricane Center.
As of Monday evening, the Southern Windward Islands were still experiencing “tropical storm conditions, dangerous surf and heavy rainfall,” the center said.
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Beryl’s arrival marks an unusually early start to the Atlantic hurricane season. On Sunday, Beryl became the earliest Category 4 storm recorded in the Atlantic and the only one in June. The unusually warm waters that fueled Beryl’s surprising intensification are a clear sign that this hurricane season will be far from normal in the context of a warming world caused by fossil fuel pollution.
Jim Kossin, a hurricane expert and science adviser to the nonprofit First Street Foundation, said Beryl is breaking June records because ocean temperatures are now as warm as they are during the peak of a normal hurricane season.
“Hurricanes don’t know what month it is, they only know their surroundings,” Kosin told CNN. “Beryl is breaking the June record because she thinks it’s September.”
Kossin added that there is “definitely a human signature” in the ocean heat that is causing Beryl’s unprecedented strengthening.
• Beryl is a dangerous hurricane. The storm was located 125 miles northwest of Grenada and was moving west-northwest at 21 mph with sustained winds of 150 mph as of Monday night. Beryl’s hurricane-force winds extend out 40 miles from the center and tropical storm-force winds extend out to about 125 mph. The center of the storm is expected to move away from the Southern Windward Islands Monday night and across the southeastern and central Caribbean through Tuesday, passing near Jamaica on Wednesday.
• Life-threatening storm surges and floods: “A life-threatening storm surge could cause water levels to rise up to 6 to 9 feet above normal tides in onshore wind areas near landfall of the eye within the hurricane warning area,” the National Hurricane Center warned. The center also noted that large swells from the storm will continue in the Windward and southern Leeward Islands over the next few days. “Swells are also expected to reach the southern coasts of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola late tonight through Tuesday. These swells are expected to create life-threatening rough sea and outflow conditions,” the center said.
• Hurricane Watch: A tropical storm warning is in effect for Jamaica, with hurricane conditions possible by Wednesday. A tropical storm warning is in effect for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Martinique, St. Lucia, and the southern coast of the Dominican Republic from Punta Palenque west to the Haiti border, and the southern coast of Haiti from the Dominican Republic border to Anse d’Ainault.
• Hundreds evacuated: More than 400 people were in hurricane evacuation centres across Barbados on Sunday night, the country’s evacuation centres manager, Ramona Archer-Bradshaw, told CNN affiliate CBC News.
Ricardo Mazarin/AP
Hurricane Beryl flooded roads in Hastings, Barbados on Monday.
Ricardo Mazarin/AP
Hurricane Beryl battered Hastings, Barbados on Monday, sending waves crashing over palm trees.
• State of Emergency in Grenada: A state of emergency was declared by Grenada’s Governor Cécile de la Grenade on Sunday night and will remain in effect until Tuesday morning. All businesses except police stations, hospitals, prisons, waste disposal sites and the port have been closed.
• The airports remain closed: Airports in Barbados, Grenada and St. Lucia were closed on Sunday night as Beryl approached. Grenada’s Maurice Bishop International Airport is expected to reopen on Tuesday morning, a spokesman said. Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados and Hewanorra and George Charles airports in St. Lucia have also suspended operations.
• Cricket World Cup fans confused: Barbados is still hosting cricket fans from around the world who are visiting the island for the T20 World Cup, some of whom are not due to depart until Monday or Tuesday, said Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley. “Some of them have never experienced a hurricane or a storm,” she added, urging residents to help the visitors if they can.
The landing is far from the end of Beryl’s story, and its long-term course remains uncertain.
The hurricane is expected to move generally westward or northwestward over the Caribbean Sea through Thursday, remaining a major hurricane (Category 3 or higher) through mid-week, then weaken somewhat.
But the hurricane will still pack fearsome winds, torrential rains and dangerous waters well beyond its center and into much of the Caribbean. The center of Beryl is expected to pass just south of Jamaica on Wednesday, which could have even greater impacts on the country without making landfall.
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Each line represents a different forecast model that predicts where Beryl will go over the weekend. The space between the lines shows the amount of uncertainty in Beryl’s path. The wider the space, the greater the uncertainty. Its path after making landfall on the Yucatan Peninsula is the most uncertain.
It is expected to be several days between when Beryl makes first landfall in the Windward Islands on Monday and when it next makes landfall on or near Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula around Friday morning.
What happens after Beryl’s next landfall will also determine whether the cyclone can reach the Gulf of Mexico this weekend. If Beryl can move overland and reach the bathwater-warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, it could cause problems for northeastern Mexico or even the U.S. Gulf Coast.
The season has already gotten off to a busy start, with a second storm, Tropical Storm Chris, making landfall early Monday near Tuxpan, Mexico, off the Gulf Coast.
Beryl marked a troubling start to a hurricane season that forecasters had warned would be active, and Beryl’s record-breaking activity may be a sign of what’s to come.
Beryl is the first major hurricane (defined as Category 3 or higher) to form in the Atlantic in 58 years. The storm’s rapid strengthening at this time of hurricane season is unusual, according to National Hurricane Center Director Mike Brennan. Tropical hurricanes, especially strong ones, are rare in the mid-Atlantic east of the Lesser Antilles in June, with only a handful of such tropical hurricanes having formed there in the past, according to NOAA records.
This storm isn’t just early for the season: It is the third-fastest major hurricane to have occurred in the Atlantic, after Hurricane Alma on June 8, 1966, and Hurricane Audrey, which became a major hurricane on June 27, 1957.
Beryl also set a record as the easternmost tropical Atlantic hurricane to form in June, breaking the previous record set in 1933.
The central and eastern Atlantic are traditionally more active in August as ocean temperatures have time to warm and fuel the developing systems.
But this year, the transition from El Niño to La Niña has resulted in warmer than average water temperatures in the Atlantic basin and a lack of wind shear, both of which are drivers of tropical development.
“Beryl found herself in an environment where the waters were very warm for this time of year,” Brennan said.
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According to research by Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane expert and researcher at Colorado State University, the formation of such systems in this part of the Atlantic so early in the summer is a sign of an active hurricane season ahead, when ocean temperatures in June and July typically aren’t warm enough for tropical systems to become active.
National Weather Service forecasters expect between 17 and 25 named storms this season, with 13 of them becoming hurricanes.
“This is well above average,” Brennan noted.
CNN’s Monica Garrett, Jean Norman, Michael Rios, Marlon Salt, Sandy Sidhu, Melissa Alonso, Isaac Yee, Eric Zerkel, Rachel Ramirez and Brandon Miller contributed to this report.
