Caribbean braces for powerful Hurricane Beryl

People purchase groceries ahead of Hurricane Beryl in Arnos Vale, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Sunday, June 30, 2024.

Hurricane Beryl plowed toward the southeast Caribbean early Monday as officials warned residents to seek shelter ahead of powerful winds and swells expected from the Category 3 storm.

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned that Beryl — currently churning in the Atlantic Ocean about 175 kilometers (110 miles) southeast of Barbados — remained "a dangerous major hurricane as its core moves through the Windward Islands into the eastern Caribbean".

Beryl was at one point rated Category 4, and experts said such a powerful storm forming this early in the Atlantic hurricane season — which runs from early June to late November — is extremely rare.

"Only five major (Category 3+) hurricanes have been recorded in the Atlantic before the first week of July," hurricane expert Michael Lowry posted on social media platform X.

"Beryl would be the sixth and earliest this far east in the tropical Atlantic."

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines as well as Grenada were at the highest risk of being at the center of the storm's core beginning early Monday, the NHC said, adding that "potentially catastrophic wind damage is expected".

Barbados, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and Tobago were all under hurricane warnings, the NHC said, while tropical storm warnings or watches were in effect for Martinique and farther along the storm's path, in southern Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

A state of emergency was declared in Tobago, the smaller of the two islands that make up Trinidad and Tobago, with schools ordered closed on Monday, top official Farley Augustine said.

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