Semafor Signals
Historic Hurricane Beryl makes landfall in Caribbean: ‘This truly is something else’
Insights from The Associated Press, Heatmap News, BBC, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The News
Hurricane Beryl made landfall on the Grenadines’ Carriacou Island in the Caribbean. It’s the earliest Category 4 hurricane on record to strike in the Atlantic Basin.
Beryl began picking up speed on Sunday morning, rapidly intensifying into a major, “extremely dangerous” hurricane.
SIGNALS
Beryl is historic in more ways than one
Beryl was historic even before it had struck, a hurricane specialist told The Associated Press. For one, no hurricane east of the Lesser Antilles islands had ever reached Category 4 — which denotes a storm capable of causing catastrophic damage — in June, well before the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. Beryl evolved from a tropical depression to a hurricane in about 42 hours, “unusually fast,” Heatmap News wrote. Storms have only ever gathered speed that fast six times before in the Atlantic, and never before September. “Incredible doesn’t cut it. This truly is something else of a hurricane.” meteorologist Noah Bergren wrote on X.
Record ocean temperatures put energy into storm
Part of the reason why Beryl is so strong has to do with the record warm ocean temperatures, which are the highest in history for this time of year in the deep Atlantic, an expert told The Associated Press. The ocean is “warmer than it would be at the peak of the hurricane season in September,” they added. Data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Service analyzed by the BBC earlier this year found that oceans globally had broken record temperatures every day over the previous year, as a result of greenhouse gas emissions and the development of El Niño, a climate pattern that changes the way winds blow in the Pacific Ocean.
2024’s hurricane season is likely to see more storms than usual
Beryl is among the first hurricanes in a season that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts will see more storms than usual. The Atlantic hurricane season typically produces 14 named storms, but this year, experts expect 17 to 25 (storms are named when winds reach speeds above 39 mph). Again, warm ocean temperatures are to blame, as is the development of La Niña in the Pacific (an opposing climate phenomenon to El Niño), and wind pattern changes. “Human-caused climate change is warming our ocean...and melting ice on land, leading to sea level rise, which increases the risk of storm surge. Sea level rise represents a clear human influence on the damage potential from a given hurricane,” NOAA warned.
