U.S. forecasters have upgraded Hurricane Beryl to a “potentially catastrophic Category 5 hurricane” as it makes its way across the central Caribbean Sea.
An advisory issued late Monday night by the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Beryl was carrying maximum sustained winds of 260 kilometers an hour, putting it at the highest level of the center’s five-level scale that measures a storm’s maximum sustained wind speed and destructive potential.
The storm is also carrying hurricane-force winds up to 65 kilometers outward from its center and tropical storm-force winds up to 205 kilometers.
The NHC is predicting that Beryl will reach Jamaica by Wednesday, where it will produce between 10 to 20 centimeters of rain in portions of the island, with localized totals up to 30 centimeters, which may trigger flash flooding in vulnerable areas.
A hurricane warning is in effect for Jamaica, while the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which share the island of Hispaniola, is under a tropical storm warning. Forecasters say portions of Hispaniola could be hit with 5 to 15 centimeters of rainfall from the outer bands of Beryl.
Hurricane Beryl made landfall across the Windward Islands Monday as a Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 241 kilometers an hour, striking first on Grenada’s Carriacou island. Grenada Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said late Monday night that Carriacou had been “flattened” within a half-hour of landfall, while there were also initial reports of destruction on the nearby island of Petite Martinique.
The New York Times quoted Prime Minister Mitchell as saying one person was killed in the capital St. George.
Widespread destruction was also reported across the southeast Caribbean in Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, including hundreds of homes and businesses damaged or destroyed and downed power lines, leaving many communities cut off from the outside world.
Beryl grew from a tropical storm to a major hurricane in merely 42 hours, which has only happened six other times in the recorded history of hurricanes in the Atlantic. The hurricane is also the earliest to hit Category 4 status in the region. Hurricane Dennis became a Category 4 storm on July 8, 2005.
Beryl is the second named event in the hurricane season for the Atlantic. Tropical Storm Alberto hit northeastern Mexico in June, killing four people.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has warned of an above-average hurricane season.
Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
