Hurricane Beryl strengthened to Category 5 status late Monday after it ripped doors, windows and roofs off homes across the southeastern Caribbean with devastating winds and storm surge fueled by the Atlantic's record warmth.
Beryl made landfall on the island of Carriacou in Grenada as the earliest Category 4 storm in the Atlantic, then late in the day the National Hurricane Center in Miami said its winds had increased to Category 5 strength.
Fluctuations in strength, and later a significant weakening, were forecast as the storm pushes further into the Caribbean in the coming days.
Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said one person had died and he could not yet say if there were other fatalities because authorities had not been able to assess the situation on the islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique, where there were initial reports of major damage but communications were largely down.
Streets from St. Lucia island south to Grenada were strewn with shoes, trees, downed power lines and other debris. Banana trees were snapped in half and cows lay dead in green pastures with homes made of tin and plywood tilting precariously nearby.
Beryl was still swiping the southeast Caribbean early Tuesday on a track heading just south of Jamaica and toward Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula by late Thursday as a Category 1 storm.
It reached Category 5 strength late Monday and intensified further early Tuesday morning to 165 mph (270 kph) winds.
Beryl was about 445 miles (715 kilometers) east-southeast of Isla Beata in the Dominican Republic and was moving west-northwest at 22 mph (35 kph). A hurricane warning was in effect for Jamaica, and a tropical storm warning for the southern coast of Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Fluctuations were likely but Beryl was expected to stay near major hurricane intensity as it moved into the central Caribbean and passed near Jamaica on Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center said. After that, significant weakening was expected.
The last strong hurricane to hit the southeast Caribbean was Hurricane Ivan 20 years ago, which killed dozens of people in Grenada.
