Hurricane Beryl re-intensifies to a Category 4 as it closes in on the Windward Islands

Given its speed, Mitchell said they expect the storm to very well be covering all of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique.

In Tobago, gusty winds and fallen trees were already reported from Beryl Monday morning. The island is under a hurricane warning while Trinidad is under a tropical storm warning.

As Beryl regained strength and entered the eastern Caribbean, Jamaica advised all fishermen to stay out of the ocean.

What’s next?

Once it clears the Windward Islands, Beryl’s future is a little less clear. The latest hurricane center forecast track keeps the storm on a straight shot to the Yucatan, where it could make landfall near Belize as a Category 2 hurricane Friday morning.

On the way, it could pass dangerously close to Jamaica on Wednesday, enough to lash the island with high winds and storm surge.

On the other side of the Yucatan, short-lived Tropical Storm Chris fizzled out early Monday, dumping some rain over Mexico and crossing another name off the list.

The next contender could be right behind Beryl, a disturbance the hurricane center has tagged with a 60% chance of strengthening into a tropical depression or storm within the next seven days, and a 30% chance of forming in the next two, as of the 8 a.m. update.

Those figures are a slight downgrade from earlier in the morning, a sign that the cooler water left in Beryl’s wake and increased wind shear nearby could slow down the development of anything behind it.

“Environmental conditions appear marginally conducive for additional development of this system, and a tropical depression could form by the middle part of this week while it moves generally westward at 15 to 20 mph across the central and western tropical Atlantic,” forecasters wrote.

The next name on the list is Debby.