Bridgetown, Barbados
People buy groceries in preparation for Hurricane Beryl, Sunday, June 30, 2024, in Arnos Vale, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Hurricane Beryl was hurtling toward the southeastern Caribbean early Monday, with authorities warning residents to evacuate as strong winds and swells from the Category 3 storm were expected.
The US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) warned that Beryl, currently swirling in the Atlantic Ocean about 175 kilometres (110 miles) southeast of Barbados, “remains a dangerous major hurricane as its centre moves through the Windward Islands and into the eastern Caribbean”.
Beryl was briefly rated a Category 4, and experts said it was highly unusual for a storm so powerful to form this early in the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from early June to late November.
“Only five major hurricanes (category 3 or above) have been recorded in the Atlantic through the first week of July,” hurricane expert Michael Lawrie posted on social media platform X.
“Beryl will be the sixth and the earliest in this eastern part of the tropical Atlantic.”
The NHC added that St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada were at highest risk of being at the centre of the storm from early Monday morning, with “devastating wind damage expected”.
Hurricane warnings have been issued for Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada and Tobago, while tropical storm watches or watches are in effect for Martinique and southern Haiti and the Dominican Republic along the storm’s path, according to the NHC.
A state of emergency was declared in Tobago, the smaller of the two islands that make up Trinidad and Tobago, and schools were ordered closed on Monday, said senior official Farley Augustine.
Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell urged people to quickly seek shelter in evacuation centres and to adhere to an island-wide curfew that ran from 7pm to 7am on Tuesday.
A meeting of Caribbean regional bloc CARICOM scheduled for this week in Grenada has been postponed because of the hurricane.
In Barbados’ capital, Bridgetown, cars queued at petrol stations and supermarkets and grocery stores were packed with shoppers buying food, water and other supplies. Some families had already boarded up their homes.
Beryl became the first hurricane of the 2024 Atlantic season early Saturday and quickly strengthened to a Category 4, the first time it has reached that level in June, according to NHC records.
Devastating wind damage
Anything above Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson scale is considered a major hurricane, and Category 4 storms have sustained winds of at least 209 kilometers per hour (130 miles per hour).
The NHC said at about 5 p.m. Sunday (11 p.m. GMT) that Beryl’s maximum sustained winds were estimated to be 130 mph.
The NHC warned that Beryl was expected to maintain its strength as it moved across the Caribbean, and warned residents and authorities in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and other northwestern Caribbean countries to closely monitor its path.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in late May that this year is expected to be an “exceptional” hurricane season, with up to seven hurricanes of Category 3 or higher.
The agency said warmer waters in the Atlantic Ocean and conditions linked to the La Niña weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean were the reasons an increase in storms was expected.
In recent years, due to the effects of climate change, extreme weather events such as hurricanes have become more frequent and more devastating.
