Alex DaSilva explains the catastrophic flooding, widespread power outages and damage to structures expected from Hurricane Beryl when it reaches Jamaica.
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00:00I want to bring in our AccuWeather hurricane expert meteorologist Alex DeSilva and you know Alex,
00:06there are three things that can weaken the barrel. Cooler waters, dry air and increased wind shear.
00:16And we really don't have any of that going on certainly right now and water temperatures have
00:20never been an issue with this storm. Yeah it really doesn't look like there's a whole lot
00:24to stop this thing right now. There's a little bit of southwesterly wind shear moving over the storm
00:29right now. That's kind of why you're seeing this more disheveled look to the storm where most of
00:33the thunderstorm action has kind of been pushed over the eye of the storm. That's not that's why
00:37you can't look down right at the center of the storm and see the ocean essentially what we could
00:41see yesterday. So again you can see those fanning of the cloud tops on the northern side of the
00:45system. The system is still breathing very well. That's why it's maintaining its intensity as a
00:50very powerful major hurricane. The hurricane hunters are currently flying around in there
00:55and they're still finding that the core of the system despite the more disheveled look
00:59is still maintaining itself right now. Now as we take a look at the track Alex this is going to
01:06skirt right along the south shore of Jamaica this afternoon. Yeah I'm extremely concerned about
01:11Kingston, Jamaica. They're located in the southeastern corner of the country there. A
01:16deadly storm surge is likely to come in there later on this afternoon. Plenty of rainfall.
01:21We're concerned about mudslides and damaging winds especially right along the southern coast
01:26of the island. Let's talk about what's going to happen as we go forward here Alex. As this
01:31tracks across the Yucatan Peninsula and then back into the Bay of Campeche as we head toward late
01:38Friday into Saturday. We'll be tracking the location of a couple of systems across the
01:43United States that will dictate where Barrow goes next. Yeah the main feature we're going to be
01:49watching is an area of high pressure that's going to be migrating off to the southeast coast
01:53and then a dip in the jet stream that's going to be moving in over Texas. Now the key is going to
01:57be the strength of Barrow as it moves over the Yucatan here. So if the storm is a little bit
02:03stronger then it's more likely to be picked up by that trough and come a little bit closer to Texas.
02:08Now if the system gets torn apart a little bit by the land interaction it's more likely to move
02:13straight west and straight west into Mexico. Let's talk about the Accuweather eyepath Alex. I know
02:18that we are making some refinements to this as we move forward. Yeah minor tweaks are going to be
02:24made right now. I just sent them down. Actually we're thinking that the storm might actually move
02:28a little bit closer to Texas now. So we're going a little bit stronger when it gets into the Bay
02:32of Campeche there and so we're thinking that it might lean a little bit more on the northern side
02:37of the window of this cone. So a little bit closer to the Texas-Mexico border here. The other concern
02:43we have Alex because that upper high is weakening the forward motion of Barrow has been brisk between
02:4920 to 23 miles per hour but there's a good chance that this could slow down quite a bit as it
02:55approaches Texas. Yeah that's my real worry here is that as soon as the storm starts moving inland
03:00the steering pattern kind of shuts down or gets very weak and so the storm may kind of meander
03:05around south Texas or northern Mexico there dumping a lot of rainfall across that area.
03:10All right Accuweather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva.
03:14Alex thanks for joining us here on Accuweather Early.