Category 4 Hurricane Beryl hits 150 mph winds near Windward Islands

Lina Portman2 days ago

0 4 minutes read

Hurricane Beryl ripped through the tiny Windward Islands Monday in a 150-mph windstorm as storm experts watched in awe and concern as the cyclone spiraled from a tropical storm to a furious Category 4 in a day.

This is a phenomenon that the world has never seen before in the Atlantic basin. Beryl is the first Category 4 hurricane to form. Its rapid intensification is the deepest ever observed at this time of year. It is the furthest easterly hurricane ever recorded for the month of June.

“We looked at this in disbelief,” said Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami. “This kind of thing is rare, even in mid-September, and here we are in late June, early July, and we’re seeing things that you rarely see.”

Beryl is not a concern in the United States at this point, but McNoldy was part of a chorus of meteorologists who saw Beryl's furious extravagance as a harbinger of a potentially brutal season.

“Florida residents should prepare for what could be a very long and grueling few months,” said Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground and a meteorologist with Yale Climate Connections. “The conditions are ripe for a crazy hurricane season.”

The last time a storm of Beryl's magnitude hit the Caribbean this early was in 2005, when Category 4 Hurricane Dennis made landfall on July 8. Dennis was followed that month by Category 5 Hurricane Emily, which became a hurricane just east of the Caribbean and followed a similar path to Beryl's predicted south of Cuba and into Mexico.

More: 2024 Hurricane Season: Rapid Intensification Forecast Improves, and Then There Was Otis

In 2005, 28 storms were named, a record that stood until 2020, when 30 storms formed. This season also extended into winter and even continued until 2006, when Tropical Storm Zeta finally ended its activities on January 6.

And it was a year that saw four Category 5 storms, including devastating hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma in the United States.

“Unfortunately, Beryl breaks records set in 1933 and 2005, two of the busiest hurricane seasons on record in Atlanta,” said Phil Klotzbach, lead researcher and hurricane expert at Colorado State University.

Eric Blake, senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, summed up Beryl in a social media post Sunday by simply saying, “My God.”

One aspect that makes Beryl's formation so unusual is that wind shear, Saharan dust and cooler ocean temperatures tend to inhibit storm formation in the main development region between Africa and the Caribbean at this time of year.

Although the thickest Saharan dust plume of the season was floating in the Atlantic last week, Beryl skirted the dry air, taking advantage of low wind shear and record ocean temperatures.

The National Hurricane Center first identified the tropical wave that would become Beryl on Tuesday, June 25, as a mix of showers and thunderstorms a few hundred miles south of the Cape Verde Islands. By Friday night, it was a tropical storm that was expected to reach force 2 with winds reaching 105 mph.

Early Saturday, NHC forecasters said there was a significant risk of rapid intensification, defined as an increase in wind speed of 35 mph or more over a 24-hour period.

Beryl's intensification nearly doubled that figure, increasing by 65 mph in 24 hours.

This rapid intensification rate is the strongest ever recorded for a hurricane at this early point in the calendar year, Klotzbach said, while cautioning that intensification rates were likely underestimated before the satellite era began around 1966.

The previous record for rapid intensification was Bertha in 2008.

Do you remember the rainy season? : Twenty years later, 2004 is remembered as the “average season” as hurricanes tore through Florida

“I think we should draw some conclusions from that. Unfortunately, it's not good news,” McNoldy said of Beryl. “It's going to be a bumpy season because we have very warm water temperatures.”

The water temperature where Beryl was filming Monday was as warm as 84 degrees, closer to what would be seen during the second week of September.

Last year’s hurricane season was unprecedented because of an El Niño weather pattern that kept storms from forming and storm-friendly water temperatures. This year is unique in that warm water is still bubbling, but La Niña is making an appearance. La Niña reduces wind shear in the Atlantic, giving tropical cyclones a better chance of establishing themselves.

Behind Beryl is an area that has a 60% chance of developing

Behind Beryl, a low-pressure area called Invest 96L has a 60 percent chance of forming in the next seven days. In a normal year, Beryl could have brought up enough cold water in its wake to deter 96L, but McNoldy said the warm water is deep enough that upwelling is unlikely.

Short-lived Tropical Storm Chris also formed and collapsed after making landfall in Mexico early Monday.

“The ocean and atmospheric conditions are unprecedented for this time of year,” Masters said. “Hurricane season is not until a month and a half later.”

Kimberly Miller is a reporter for the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network in Florida. She covers real estate and how growth is affecting the South Florida environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate digest. If you have any information, send it to [email protected]. Help support our local journalism: subscribe today.

Behind Beryl is an area that has a 60% chance of developing

Lina Portman

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