The northern eyewall of Category 4 Hurricane Beryl scraped along Jamaica’s southern coast Wednesday afternoon, walloping the island with high winds and drenching rains for most of the day with the worst impacts on the south end of the island.
Early Wednesday evening, reports of felled trees, impassable roads, extensive power outages and winds so strong they stripped roofs from buildings — including the international airport — began cropping up across Jamaica, where hundreds waited out the storm in hurricane shelters.
It’s too soon to know the full extent of the havoc the storm wrought on the island nation, but it’s already left at least seven dead from its first brush with the eastern Caribbean and leveled some of the smaller islands in the southeast Caribbean.
“It is almost Armageddon-like, almost total damage or destruction of all buildings whether they be public buildings, homes or other private facilities,” said Grenada Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell after a helicopter survey on Tuesday.
As of the 5 p.m. Eastern time update Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center said Beryl was still holding on to its Category 4 status with 140 mph sustained winds, a slight decline from earlier in the day. In a potential good sign, the initial readings in the Jamaican capital Kingston were significantly less, with sustained winds topping 48 mph and a wind gust as high as 81 mph.
After some slight weakening just before it closed in, Beryl appeared to be more organized Wednesday afternoon with a clear-out eye. Forecasters expect it to bring up to 9 feet of “life-threatening” storm surge and up to a foot of rain.
Beryl was about 65 miles west-southwest of Kingston, Jamaica and headed west-northwest at 20 mph. Hurricane-force winds extended up to 45 miles from the storm’s eye, putting Kingston within reach of the worst of the storm’s winds and covering nearly the entire island with tropical-storm-force winds, which reached up to 185 miles from the center.
Jamaica was getting smacked with the upper right section of the storm, also known as the dirty side, which brings the most storm surge and holds the greatest potential for tornado formation. It’s “the worst side of the storm,” wrote Sammy Hadi, a meteorologist with the Miami office of the National Weather Service, on Twitter.
Next on the forecast track is the Cayman Islands, which are also under hurricane warnings. Beryl is on track to pass south of the islands on Thursday as a strong Category 3 before heading onward to the Yucatan Peninsula.
From there, Beryl is forecast to make another landfall in the Quintana Roo region of Mexico as a Category 1 hurricane, before re-emerging in the Gulf of Mexico as a tropical storm. New on Wednesday morning, the hurricane center now predicts Beryl could re-strengthen to a Category 1 hurricane again before striking the northeast coast of Mexico.
Damage toll rising
Jamaican news outlets began reporting widespread power and water outages Wednesday evening as floodwaters and fallen trees began to make some roads impassable. Part of the roof at Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston ripped off in the storm, video on social media shows.
As of 5 p.m., Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness reported no official deaths and said that more than 500 people were relocated to hurricane shelters.
Jamaica also fully mobilized its security forces to maintain order, and extended the 6 p.m. cutoff time for the curfew as the storm continued to pound the island. As Jamaicans were getting swiped, Haiti announced it had lifted the alerts for its southern coast. The storm no longer presented a threat, a message from Haiti’s Office of Civil Protection said.
In Grenada, which got slammed on Monday, officials reported an “Armageddon-like” impact. The hardest hit islands saw 98% of all homes and buildings destroyed, and massive damage to communications and the electrical grid.
“Complete devastation and destruction of agriculture. Complete and total destruction of the natural environment; there is literally no vegetation left anywhere on the island of Carriacou,” Mitchell, the prime minister, said.
In Venezuela, nearly 1,500 people are homeless after Beryl’s rains caused a river to overflow and destroy about 300 homes, El Caribe reported. Venezuela announced three more official deaths from the storm, bringing the latest total to seven dead.
The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management agency, the regional body responsible for responding to disasters, said Wednesday there is not yet an official death toll and they are still assessing the destruction in member countries.
Elizabeth Riely, director of CDEMA, confirmed that while the Grenadines islands of Grenada and St. Vincent bore the brunt of the hurricane, Barbados, St. Lucia and Dominica were also affected.
Riley said based on reports provided so far, they know that 100% of the population on the island of Canouan, which has 12,600 inhabitants, was affected by Beryl. “There is an estimated 90% of the houses that were damaged either extensively or destroyed.”
Elsewhere in the Atlantic, the hurricane center continued to drop the likelihood that another system would form behind Beryl. By Wednesday morning, it had a 20% chance of strengthening into a tropical depression this week.
The system dumped heavy rain on the already-ravaged islands Wednesday, prompting a flash flood warning in Barbados.
