Hurricane Beryl is continuing to travel across the Caribbean, posing a significant threat to lives and property. Severe damage in Jamaica is expected Wednesday.
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00:00I want to bring in our hurricane expert, Alex De Silva, who's been watching this over the last couple of days.
00:06In fact, Alex, you and I talked about this extensively on Friday.
00:09And what we were concerned about was that there was a dip in the jet stream across the Windward Islands here.
00:16That was going to be lifting north, and that would provide perfect what we call ventilation or low wind shear
00:23in an area where we had lots of moisture and lots of warm water.
00:28And that's why we saw so much in the way of development over the last few days here.
00:33Well, most of the time when we talk about wind shear, we talk about it as a factor that kind of inhibits tropical development
00:39or slows the progress of strengthening.
00:41However, in about 10% of cases or so, you can get the wind shear in exactly the right area,
00:47right over the top of the system, right on the northern side of the system, and that can actually ventilate the storm.
00:52And that's actually what we saw with this system.
00:54We actually saw this with Lee last year when it went to a Category 5 hurricane.
00:58So again, this combined with the record warm sea surface temperatures are, I think,
01:03why we saw such explosive, explosive development here over the last 48 hours.
01:07All right, let's take a look.
01:08We're talking about some records.
01:10And Beryl, the earliest Category 5 hurricane on record,
01:14surpassing Hurricane Emily from 2005 back on July 16th.
01:19Not the only record we saw with this, Alex.
01:22No, it's also the southernmost hurricane to reach winds of 150 miles per hour.
01:27Usually it's tough to get hurricanes that strong that far south because you're encroaching on the equator
01:33and there's less spin, essentially, as you move south towards the equator.
01:37So a lot of our big storms have actually been a little bit further north.
01:40So that's another thing that makes this one just so, so impressive.
01:43It's also the first major hurricane east of the Lesser Antilles during the month of June.
01:48And we just have not seen this many or this strong of storms in July.
01:52Usually we wait towards later into the year when you see the big Cat 4s and Cat 5s.
01:58Category 4 hurricanes and Category 5 hurricanes have what we call the stadium effect.
02:04You see it a lot under the eye.
02:06Here is the eye as it went over the northern part of the, well, here's Grenada,
02:10and then these are the Gerenadines, went right in between there.
02:14It's called the stadium effect, Alex. Explain.
02:17Yeah, around the center of the storm you have a lot of vertical motion.
02:20You have those thunderstorm bands right along the eye wall there,
02:23so a lot of lifting going on around the system.
02:26But in the eye wall itself you have a lot of sinking air,
02:29so the air is essentially descending really quickly.
02:31It's drying out as it's descending into the center of the storm,
02:34and that's what actually causes the clearing that you're seeing in the storm.
02:37And it kind of almost looks like a V, or like if you're looking down from the top,
02:41looking down into a stadium, you can actually see all the way down to the sea surface when this happens.
02:47There were reported wind gusts of 160 miles per hour at the main airport in Grenada.
02:53It just shows you the power of Barrow when it went on through,
02:56and it only got stronger during the day yesterday.
02:59Here's the latest picture, and one thing I've noticed, Alex,
03:02you notice now on the satellite you're starting to get some erosion.
03:07You notice that on the western side of the center of circulation.
03:12I think it's starting to feel that wind shear.
03:14Yeah, there's a lot of wind shear right now in the center of the Caribbean and western Caribbean,
03:18and so right now we're starting to see that wind shear come into the western side of the storm right now
03:24and starting to move those cloud tops away from the center of the storm.
03:27So I think over the next 24 hours the storm will begin to lose wind intensity
03:31as it begins to approach a more hostile environment.
03:35Nevertheless, Jamaica needs to be on alert for this thing.
03:38We're still expecting a major hurricane to interact with Jamaica tomorrow,
03:42so we're talking about life-threatening flooding, damaging winds,
03:45and a life-threatening storm surge coming to Jamaica tomorrow.
03:49All right, let's talk about the United States here,
03:51because we've always been concentrating on the upper-level high across the southeast U.S.
03:57as we get into Thursday, Friday, and Saturday as the main steering influence,
04:01but there's going to be some changes in that upper high as we get toward the weekend, Alex.
04:06Yeah, I think confidence is pretty high over the next several days
04:09that the storm is just going to continue on this northwestern path.
04:12By the time it gets to the Yucatan Peninsula,
04:14then we have to start worrying about is there going to be a turn north.
04:18Like you said, that area of high pressure will begin to shift to the east.
04:21There will be a little bit of a weakness.
04:23Now, the stronger the storm is by the time it gets to the Yucatan Peninsula,
04:27the greater chance I think it has of turning north.
04:30Stronger cyclones, typically their thunderstorms can essentially reach higher up into the atmosphere,
04:35allowing it to be steered by upper-level steering currents essentially.
04:40If the storm stays a little bit weaker once it gets to the Yucatan Peninsula,
04:43it's actually more likely to be steered straight west
04:46because it's going to be following more of the normal east-to-westerly trade winds
04:50that are in the Caribbean and southern Gulf of Mexico.
04:53But I am concerned about this turn to the north.
04:57We're forecasting the system to be a hurricane by the time it gets to the Yucatan Peninsula,
05:01which will essentially allow those cloud tops to reach higher up into the atmosphere,
05:07allowing the storm to essentially feel that break in the high pressure.
05:12And we're going to be adjusting this, I understand, Alex, a little farther to the north,
05:17and we're making those adjustments right now.
05:19Yeah, right now I just got through, finished making the map right now.
05:22We're going to be turning the storm a little bit more into Texas.
05:25We're actually going to be having landfall just south of Brownsville, Texas here.
05:30All right.
05:31Accuweather lead hurricane expert Alex DeSilva,
05:33thanks for the work you've done and thanks for joining us here on Accuweather Early.