Hurricane Beryl is carving a devastating path through the Caribbean, wind speeds reaching 165mph on Monday, making this the strongest Atlantic hurricane on record in July.
Beryl is unprecedented for a host of other reasons. On June 30 it became the earliest Category 5 Atlantic hurricane — the most powerful hurricane status — on record, more than two weeks earlier than other hurricanes of the same magnitude. It also intensified at breakneck speed, taking 42 hours to go from a tropical depression to a major hurricane. In fact, the Atlantic basin does not usually see its first major hurricane until about September 1.
Hurricanes that form early in the season, in June and July, usually develop to the western edge of the Caribbean basin. Beryl was the furthest east that a hurricane has formed in the Atlantic in June, breaking the previous record set in 1933.
This unprecedented storm has been supercharged by unusually warm seas, not just on the surface but deeper down in the ocean. Warm ocean waters are like high-octane fuel for hurricanes to feed off for the heat and humidity they need to develop into a full-blown storm. “Caribbean ocean heat content today is normally what we get in the middle of September,” Philip Klotzbach at Colorado State University noted. “One reason why Hurricane Beryl intensified to a Category 5 hurricane over two weeks earlier than any other Atlantic Category 5 on record is due to extremely high ocean heat content levels.”
Another driving force behind Beryl’s development has been a change from El Niño to La Niña in the tropical Pacific seas. El Niño often stifles hurricanes in the Atlantic by shearing the top of the storm clouds with high levels winds sweeping in from the Pacific. But the change to La Niña conditions tends to weaken the shearing winds, giving Atlantic hurricanes more chance to develop.
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Even though Beryl is steadily weakening, it is still highly dangerous and could reach the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico on Friday and hit the coast of northeastern Mexico or Texas early next week.
