The monstrous storm that has taken the name Beryl severely damaged islands in Granada and the Caribbean as a Category 5 storm Monday and is heading toward Jamaica and possibly Texas, according to some forecast cones, AccuWeather reported.
This afternoon, Beryl hit Jamaica as a Category 4 hurricane, moving west-northwestward at 18 mph. The eye passed within 50 miles of Kingston. The storm has already been blamed for at least seven deaths and significant property damage.
Some forecasts say the storm will be in Texas Sunday at midday. By then, “Interaction with the larger landmasses of the Greater Antilles in the central and western Caribbean should begin to take the edge off Beryl’s intensity,” AccuWeather’s chief on-air meteorologist, Bernie Rayno, said. The storm is expected to weaken as it passes over the Yucatan Peninsula and be downgraded to a tropical storm when it lands on Mexico’s coast for the second time.
(Key: TS—tropical storm, HU—hurricane, MH—major hurricane)Beryl is making history as the first June hurricane with sustained winds this high and the first Atlantic hurricane in June to reach Category 5 strength. In what is a bullish forecast for the number of hurricanes and the number of severe hurricanes, the season is off to an aggressive start.
To find out more about hurricanes and provide emergency management officials with more reliable forecasts, a group of about 30 pilots, data crunchers, and scientists hop into planes named after Muppet characters in Lakeland, Florida, and fly into the storms. They gather data from directly inside the storm, using Doppler radar on the belly of the planes and in the tail for 3-D images so they can help emergency managers prepare for what’s to come.
“It’s like being on a roller coaster in a carwash, except you don’t know when the ups and downs will occur, or what the next turn is,” The New York Times quoted Dr. Jonathan Zawislak, a meteorologist and flight director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as saying as he prepared for his third Beryl reconnaissance flight.
