Forecasters issued dire warnings on Saturday that Tropical Storm Beryl was on track to become the first hurricane of the 2024 Atlantic storm season as it continued to gain strength and move west toward the Windward Islands, southeast of Puerto Rico and north of Venezuela.
Several Caribbean islands were under a hurricane watch on Saturday afternoon, including Barbados, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada.
A hurricane watch indicates that hurricane conditions are possible within 48 hours and that residents should prepare to act. The islands of Martinique, Dominica and Tobago were under a tropical storm watch.
Forecasters predicted Beryl would hit Saint Vincent and the Grenadines on Monday morning, with damaging winds preceding it likely to reach the capital, Kingstown, at 7 a.m. local time. Winds of at least 58 miles per hour were forecast to reach Barbados by 2 a.m.
Some computer weather models suggest that the storm could intensify into a major hurricane, which is a Category 3 or higher.
According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration records, only three storms have reached Category 3 status in the North Atlantic Ocean this early in the season: Alma in 1966, Audrey in 1957, and an unnamed storm in 1916.
All made landfall on the U.S. coastline in the Gulf of Mexico: Alma near St. Marks, Fla.; Audrey near Port Arthur, Texas, and the 1916 storm near Mobile, Ala.
The system became Tropical Storm Beryl late on Friday when its sustained winds reached 39 miles per hour. At 74 m.p.h., a storm becomes a hurricane. As of 2 p.m. on Saturday, the National Hurricane Center estimated Beryl had sustained winds near 65 m.p.h., with higher gusts.
A named storm this far east in the Atlantic is unusual for June, John Cangialosi, a forecaster with the National Hurricane Center, wrote in an advisory Friday.
“There have only been a few storms in history that have formed over the central or eastern tropical Atlantic this early in the year,” he wrote.
Here are key things to know about the storm.
-
The storm is expected to cross the islands of the eastern Caribbean as early as Sunday night before traversing the central Caribbean Sea through the middle of next week.
-
Three to six inches of rain, hurricane-force winds and dangerous storm surge are possible in the eastern Caribbean Islands, including Barbados, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sunday into Monday.
-
There is a fair amount of uncertainty in the forecast about the track the storm will take, especially beyond three days.
Typically a June storm in this part of the Atlantic wouldn’t intensify into a hurricane, but the conditions in the atmosphere appear to support gradual strengthening, Mr. Cangialosi said.
This hurricane season is expected to be busy.
Forecasters have warned that the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season could be much more active than usual.
In late May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted 17 to 25 named storms this year, an “above-normal” number and a prediction in line with more than a dozen forecasts earlier in the year from experts at universities, private companies and government agencies.
Hurricane seasons produce 14 named storms, on average.
The seasonal hurricane outlooks were notably aggressive because forecasters looking at the start of the season saw a combination of circumstances that didn’t exist in records dating back to the mid-1800s: record warm water temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean and the potential formation of the weather pattern known as La Niña.
La Niña occurs in the Pacific because of changing ocean temperatures, and it affects weather patterns globally.
When it is strong, it typically provides a calm environment in the Atlantic. This allows storms to develop more easily and to strengthen without interference from wind patterns that might otherwise keep them from organizing.
John Yoon, Aimee Ortiz and John Keefe contributed reporting.