Hurricane Beryl headed toward Mexico and the Cayman Islands early Thursday, threatening strong winds and storm surges after wreaking havoc on the southern coast of Jamaica.
Beryl weakened overnight to a Category 3 hurricane with winds of 125 miles (200 kilometers) per hour, according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC), but is forecast to be “at or near major hurricane intensity” by the time it passes the Caymans.
The NHC said Thursday that “strong winds, dangerous storm surges, and damaging winds” are expected across the Cayman Islands overnight.
The storm left a trail of destruction across the Caribbean, killing at least seven people and bringing flooding and landslides as it moved toward Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
According to NHC records, this storm is the first hurricane to reach Category 4 status in June, and the first to reach Category 5 status in July.
Mexican officials began preparations, with the NHC warning that Beryl would remain a hurricane until it reached the Yucatán Peninsula.
National Civil Protection Coordinator Laura Velásquez said “we will have intense rains and strong winds” starting Thursday, announcing the deployment of hundreds of military personnel, marines and electric workers amid fears of damage.
The government has prepared 112 shelters with a capacity of about 20,000 people and closed schools in Quintana Roo state, where Hurricane Beryl is expected to make landfall.
More than 400,000 people in Jamaica are without power, the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper reported, citing a public utility company.
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness declared a 6am to 6pm curfew across the island of 2.8 million people and urged Jamaicans to obey evacuation orders.
Desmon Brown, manager of the National Stadium in Kingston, said his staff were fully prepared.
“We’ve taped up our windows, covered up our equipment – including computers, printers and things like that. Other than that, it’s mainly concrete, so there’s not much we can do,” Brown told the Jamaica Observer newspaper.
‘no communication’
Hurricane Beryl has already caused a string of deaths, with at least three people killed in Grenada, where the storm made landfall on Monday, as well as one person in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and three in Venezuela.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said rebuilding would require a “very herculean effort” following the massive destruction and that “about 90 percent of the houses were blown away” on Union Island.
“Most of the country has no electricity and more than half has no water,” he said.
Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said the storm-hit island of Cariacou was almost completely cut off, with homes, telecommunications and fuel facilities destroyed.
About 9,000 people live on the 13.5-square-mile (35-square-kilometer) island. Mitchell said at least two people were killed there, while a third died when a tree fell on a home on the country’s main island of Grenada.
In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a person was killed by the storm on the island of Bequia, while in Venezuela’s northeastern coastal state of Sucre, a man died after being swept away by a flooded river, officials there said.
Climate change
It’s extremely rare for such a powerful storm to form so early in the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from early June to late November.
Warm ocean temperatures are crucial for hurricanes, and North Atlantic waters are currently two to five degrees Fahrenheit (1-3 degrees Celsius) warmer than normal, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
UN climate chief Simon Steele, whose family lives on Carriacou Island, said climate change was “pushing disasters to new record levels of destruction.”
He said Monday that his parents’ property was damaged, “Disasters on a scale that used to be the stuff of science fiction are becoming meteorological fact, and the climate crisis is the main culprit.”
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