Hurricane Beryl is heading toward Jamaica on Tuesday as a powerful Category 4 storm, dumping rain on parts of Hispaniola after killing at least three people on the small islands in the eastern Caribbean.
Tropical storm conditions are expected for parts of the southern coasts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Tuesday evening, according to an advisory from the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).
“Beryl is expected to bring life-threatening winds and storm surge to Jamaica on Wednesday and the Cayman Islands on Wednesday night and Thursday,” the NHC said. Hurricane warnings have been issued for both locations.
In Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, which is gripped by gang violence and an ongoing humanitarian crisis, strong winds surprised residents on Tuesday afternoon.
The NHC said the country’s southwestern peninsula could see 4-8 inches (10-20 cm) of rain, with some places seeing up to 12 inches. New Haiti Prime Minister Gerry Conille warned residents to take precautions and remain vigilant.
Scientists have said that this unusually early storm is rapidly strengthening, possibly due to human-caused climate change. It is likely to remain as a hurricane when it passes near Jamaica and the Cayman Islands later this week.
Beryl, the first hurricane of the 2024 Atlantic season and the first to reach the highest category on the Saffir–Simpson scale, downed power lines and caused flash flooding on small islands.
The hurricane has hit Saint Vincent and the Grenadines particularly hard, according to Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves.
“The hurricane came and went, leaving behind a huge amount of devastation,” he said, adding that 90% of homes on Union Island, an island in the Grenadines archipelago, were “severely damaged or destroyed.”
The Prime Minister confirmed the death of one person and said that more deaths may be confirmed in the coming days.
In a video briefing on Tuesday, Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell stressed that two of the country’s three islands, Carriacou and Petite Martinique, had borne the brunt of the natural disaster.
“The situation is serious. There is no electricity. Homes and buildings are almost completely destroyed,” he said, citing roads blocked by downed power lines and disrupted supplies because of destroyed fuel stations.
Mitchell said so far there have been at least two deaths from Beryl’s impact.
The storm, with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph (241 kph), is currently located about 360 miles (579 km) east-southeast of Jamaica’s capital, Kingston, according to the NHC.
The Miami-based hurricane center estimates the massive weather system was moving west-northwest at 22 mph (35 kph).
In Jamaica, people pulled fishing boats out of the water and tied them up in preparation for the storm’s arrival, while others said there was still time to prepare Tuesday morning.
“We Jamaicans don’t take things seriously,” said Stanford Pusey, showing off items protected by plastic tarpaulins.
In Fort-de-France on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, north of St. Vincent, a video shared on social media showed heavy flooding of streets while locals attempted to clear away debris.
In addition to Haiti’s southern coast, the NHC also issued a hurricane warning for Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, home to popular beach resorts.
Ahead of the expected storm landfall on Thursday night, Mexico’s Defense Ministry said the army, air force and National Guard had activated emergency response protocols in three Yucatan states, opening 120 shelters and deploying about 4,900 troops on the peninsula.
Scientists say the storm’s unusually early arrival and rapid growth is partly due to rising ocean temperatures.
Climate change likely contributed to Beryl’s early formation, according to scientists surveyed by Reuters, and also caused it to rapidly increase in intensity, which could provide a frightening preview of future storms.
Global warming has helped push temperatures in the North Atlantic to record highs, said Christopher Rosoff, an atmospheric scientist at the US-based National Center for Atmospheric Research. Warmer waters lead to more evaporation, leading to more intense storms with higher wind speeds, he said.
According to Rowan University meteorologist Andra Garner, Beryl intensified from a Category 1 to a Category 4 hurricane in less than 10 hours. She said it was the fastest intensifying hurricane ever recorded before September, the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season.
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