Array
– After leaving a trail of destruction across the eastern Caribbean and at least nine people dead, Hurricane Beryl weakened as it chugged over open water toward Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Thursday, going from the earliest Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic to Category 2 by the afternoon.
Jack Beven, senior hurricane specialist at the U.S. Hurricane Center, said “the biggest immediate threat now that the storm is moving away from the Cayman Islands is landfall in the Yucatan Peninsula.”
The storm’s center was about 215 miles (345 kilometers) east-southeast of Tulum, Mexico, on Thursday afternoon. It had maximum sustained winds of 110 mph (175 kph) and was moving west-northwest at 20 mph (about 31 kph).
Beryl was expected to bring heavy rain and moderate winds to Mexico’s Caribbean coast, before crossing Yucatan and restrengthening in the Gulf of Mexico to make a second strike on northeast Mexico.
Separately, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Thursday that Tropical Storm Aletta had formed in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico’s coast. Aletta, which was located about 190 miles (310 kilometers) from Manzanillo and had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph), was forecast to head away from land and dissipate by the weekend.
As the wind began gusting over Tulum’s white sand beaches on Thursday afternoon, four-wheelers with megaphones rolled along the sand telling people to leave. Tourists snapped photos of the growing surf, but largely left as Beryl was expected to make landfall south of Tulum early on Friday.
Over the past days, Beryl has damaged or destroyed 95% of homes on a pair of islands in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, jumbled fishing boats in Barbados and ripped off roofs in Jamaica before rumbling past the Cayman Islands early Thursday.
Mexico’s popular Caribbean coast prepared shelters, evacuated some small outlying coastal communities and even moved sea turtle eggs off beaches threatened by storm surge.
In Playa del Carmen, most businesses were closed Thursday and some were boarding up windows as tourists jogged by and some locals walked their dogs under sunny skies.
