GENEVA: Hurricane Beryl, which has strengthened to a Category 5 storm, is setting the tone for a “very harmful” hurricane season, the World Meteorological Group (WMO) mentioned on Tuesday (Jul 2).
Beryl swept by way of Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines, leaving many households with out energy, and is anticipated to hit Jamaica on Wednesday and the Cayman Islands later within the week.
“It is the earliest Class 5 hurricane on report within the Atlantic, Caribbean and Central American basin,” WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis informed reporters in Geneva.
“It units a precedent for what we worry goes to be a really, very, very energetic, very harmful hurricane season, which is able to affect the complete basin.”
A Class 5 hurricane underneath the five-step Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale brings winds of 252 kmh or greater, able to inflicting catastrophic injury together with the destruction of houses and infrastructure.
“We’d like to keep in mind that it solely takes one land-falling hurricane to set again many years of growth,” Nullis mentioned.
“We worry what is occurring with Hurricane Beryl, which has hit very, very small islands within the Caribbean that aren’t used to this dimension of hurricane.”
Anne-Claire Fontaine, scientific officer for the WMO Tropical Cyclone Programme, mentioned one motive for Beryl creating so early within the season was linked to hotter ocean temperatures.
“The Principal Growth Area (MDR), the place within the ocean the place the hurricanes are creating … is the warmest ever.”