Hurricane Beryl hits Mexico as Jamaica, Caribbean islands assess damage : NPR

Hurricane Beryl is now turning its wrath on Mexico as a Category 2 storm, weakened but still dangerous after tearing through a series of Caribbean islands in recent days.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) says Beryl made landfall just east of Tulum on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula shortly after 6 a.m. ET on Friday, with maximum sustained winds of 110 mph. They dropped to 100 mph shortly after.

“Rapid weakening is expected as Beryl moves farther inland and crosses the Yucatan Peninsula today, but slow re-intensification is expected once Beryl moves back over the Gulf of Mexico,” the NHC said in its 8 a.m. ET update.

The NHC is forecasting dangerous hurricane-force winds, a storm surge of four to six feet and damaging waves as the storm moves inland across the northern Yucatan Peninsula during the day. It says the region could see four to six inches of rain, with up to 10 inches in some areas.

The stretch of coastline from Puerto Costa Maya to Cancun, including the island of Cozumel, is under a hurricane warning.

Cancun, home to beaches and Mayan ruins, is a popular vacation destination. Some 3,000 tourists were evacuated from Isla Mujeres back to the mainland on Thursday, according to Reuters, which also reports that at least 100 flights out of Cancun’s international airport were canceled that day.

The Mexican government issued a “red alert” ahead of Beryl’s arrival, calling on people to stay either in their homes or at storm shelters. It also hurried to evacuate sea turtle eggs from its beaches.

“No hesitating. Material things can be recovered. The most important thing is life,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

Access to a beach remains closed ahead of Hurricane Beryl’s arrival in Cancun, Quintana Roo State, Mexico, on Thursday.

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Elizabeth Ruiz/AFP

Beryl hit Jamaica as a Category 4 storm late Wednesday, lashing the island with more than 12 hours of rain.

The storm tore roofs off homes, sent trees into roadways and left some 60% of the island without electricity, the Associated Press reports. Over a thousand residents remained in shelters as of Thursday.

Journalist Nick Davis told NPR’s All Things Considered from Kingston on Thursday that authorities’ immediate concern is getting power to essential services, like water and telecommunications.

“It’s going to take days, even weeks, possibly, to be able to get parts of this country back on its feet,” he said. “The big cities will probably get power — Montego Bay and Kingston — first. But in the rural communities, it’s going to take a while.”

Jamaican authorities say a woman died after a house collapsed on her and a young man died after he was swept into a storm water drain while trying to retrieve a ball, per the AP.

That brought Beryl’s total confirmed fatalities to at least nine: Three people were reported killed in Grenada and Carriacou, one in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and three in northern Venezuela, where at least four people remain missing after floods triggered by heavy rain.

The storm passed just south of Grand Cayman Island early Thursday, sparing residents serious damage but knocking out power to thousands of customers. It strengthened back into a Category 3 storm later that day as it churned toward Mexico, but weakened before making landfall.

Beryl is expected to emerge over the southwestern Gulf of Mexico on Friday night and move toward northeastern Mexico and southern Texas by the end of the weekend, bringing heavy rainfall with it.

Texas Public Radio reports that state and local officials are beginning to take precautionary measures, even as the center of the storm remains hundreds of miles away.

Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to increase the readiness level of the state’s emergency operations center starting Friday morning. Cameron County issued a voluntary evacuation notice to people with recreational vehicles in certain county parks, and officials in Hidalgo County, Brownsville and Corpus Christi scheduled precautionary sandbag distribution events this weekend.

“As Texans and visitors around the south coastal areas begin to celebrate our nation’s Independence Day, I urge them to make an emergency plan, review hurricane evacuation routes, and continue to monitor weather conditions to ensure the safety of themselves and their loved ones,” Abbott said Thursday.

The historic hurricane has blazed a trail of destruction across the Caribbean

An aerial view of a home where the roof was blown off is seen after Hurricane Beryl passed through the area in Saint Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica, on Thursday.

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Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Beryl burst onto the radar as the most powerful hurricane ever recorded this early in the Atlantic hurricane season, a distinction earned with the help of climate change.

It wrought extensive damage across several southeastern Caribbean islands earlier this week.

It battered the coast of Barbados, destroying or damaging some 200 fishing vessels, before continuing on to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada as a Category 4 storm on its way to Jamaica and Mexico.

At least three of the Grenadine Islands report more than 90% of their homes and buildings having been destroyed or severely damaged, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency said Wednesday.

Grenada Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell described the destruction of buildings and agriculture on Carriacou and Petite Martinique as “almost Armageddon-like” in a news conference on Tuesday.

“There is literally no vegetation left anywhere on the island of Carriacou; the mangroves are totally destroyed, the boats and the marinas significantly damaged,” he said, according to USA Today. “There is almost complete destruction of the electrical grid system in Carriacou. The entire communication system is completely destroyed.”

In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Union Island — some 3 miles long and 1 mile wide, and home to about 3,000 residents — saw about 98% of its buildings damaged or destroyed, including its hospital and airport control tower.

“Union is a field of devastation,” Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said in an Instagram video from a helicopter surveying the damage. “It’s only the odd building that is not severely damaged or destroyed.”

The United Nations is making $4 million in emergency relief funds available to Grenada, Jamaica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. A growing number of humanitarian aid groups are also mobilizing to help affected residents across the Caribbean.