Hurricane Beryl: The 'extremely dangerous' Hurricane Beryl made landfall in the Caribbean islands and intensified into a category 5 storm as it downed power lines and flooded streets in several islands. The hurricane was located about 840 miles (1,355 km) east-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica, packing maximum sustained winds of 260 kmph, according to the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC).
Beryl struck the Caribbean region as the earliest Category 4 storm on record using the Saffir-Simpson five-point scale. The hurricane is expected to dump 3-6 inches (8-15 cm) of rain across Barbados and the Windward Islands on Monday night, with some areas seeing as much as 10 inches, especially in the Grenadines and Grenada, the NHC said.
Meanwhile, Jamaica's government issued a hurricane warning for the country, while tropical storm warnings were in effect for parts of the southern coasts of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. "Beryl is expected to remain an extremely dangerous major hurricane as it moves over the eastern Caribbean," the NHC said, adding that "rainfall may cause flash flooding in vulnerable areas."
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Beryl is expected to pass near Jamaica on Wednesday. Across other islands in the eastern Caribbean, residents had boarded up windows, stocked up on food and filled their cars with fuel as the storm drew closer. Vehicles were seen driving through a flooded boardwalk in Bridgetown, Barbados.
In the St. Vincent community of Prospect, damage reports included roofs ripped off of buildings, as well as power cuts in other parts of the island. Moreover, officials in Mexico have begun preparing for Beryl's arrival later this week, with the federal government issuing a statement urging authorities and the population to exercise "extreme caution."
Mexico is currently assessing damages left by heavy rains from former tropical storm Chris, in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz. "What worries us is that basins are already saturated. Then, with minimal rain ... rivers will rise," said Cutberto Ruiz, chief of meteorology at Oaxaca's civil protection agency.
What led to Hurricane Beryl?
Global warming has helped push temperatures in the North Atlantic to all-time highs, causing more surface water to evaporate, which in turn provides additional fuel for more intense hurricanes with higher wind speeds. As a result, Beryl has made a fierce start to this year's Atlantic hurricane season, with scientists arguing that climate change likely added to the ferocity of the storm.
Scientists surveyed by Reuters see the powerful hurricane as a harbinger of an unusually active hurricane season made possible by record-high temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean. "Climate change is loading the dice for more intense hurricanes to form," said Christopher Rozoff, an atmospheric scientist at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
Scientists have already predicted that events like Beryl will grow more likely with climate change, meteorologist Garner said. Her research has shown that as water temperatures rose over the last five decades, it has become more than twice as likely for storms to jump from weak storms to major hurricanes in less than 24 hours. In May, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted above-normal hurricane activity in the Atlantic this year, also pointing to unseasonably high ocean temperatures.
(with inputs from Reuters)
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