Hurricane Beryl is expected to hit the Windward Islands as an „extremely dangerous“ Category 4 hurricane, the U.S.-based Nationall Hurricane Center said.
Hurricane Beryl became the first Category 3 storm as it churned toward the southeast Caribbean, forecasters warned Sunday morning.
As of 8 a.m. ET, Beryl was located about 420 miles east-southeast of Barbados. It was upgraded to a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph and was moving west at 21 mph.
Hurricane warnings are already in effect in Barbados, St. Lucia, Grenada, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Tropical storm warnings are in effect for Martinique and Tobago, while a stormical storm watch is in effect in Dominica.
„This is a very serious situation developing for the Windward Islands“, warned the Miami-based National Hurricane Center. The center said that Beryl was „forecast to bring life-threatening winds and storm surge … as an extremely dangerous hurricane.“
Beryl is on track to move across the Windward Islands early on Monday as an „extremely dangerous“ Category 4 hurricane before traveling through the southeastern Caribbean on Monday night and Tuesday.
Two hurricane hunters were en route to the storm to gather more details about its intensity, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Beryl is expected to pass just south of Barbados early Monday and then head into the Caribbean Sea as a major hurricane on a path toward Jamaica and eventually Mexico.
More than fifty years have passed since a hurricane appeared before July 4 in the Atlantic basin. Alma hit the Florida Keys on June 8, 1966, according to Weather Underground.
