Hurricane Beryl explodes to Category 5 on path toward Jamaica and Cancun

FORT LAUDARDELE, Fla. — Hurricane Beryl continued to rapidly intensify on Tuesday morning, reaching a powerful Category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 165 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.

“Life-threatening” winds and potentially 3 to 5 feet of storm surge are forecast to strike Jamaica on Wednesday, despite some potential weakening during the day on Tuesday. It will likely remain a major hurricane as it takes a track over or just south of Jamaica.

Beryl is forecast to bring 4 to 8 inches to Jamaica Wednesday, with up to 1 foot in localized areas.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic are not in the direct path of Beryl, but is close enough to to bring a potential storm surge of 1 to 3 feet along the southern coasts, the hurricane center said. Tropical storm conditions are forecast to arrive in Haiti and the Dominican Republic Tuesday, while the Cayman Islands will experience hurricane conditions.

Southern areas of Haiti and the Dominican Republic will be impacted by Beryl’s outer bands Tuesday into Wednesday, with 2 to 6 inches of rain possible.

Over the weekend, Beryl became the strongest June hurricane on record, with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph. It was the first Category 4 storm to occur in June and the earliest Category 4 on record in the Atlantic Basin. On Sunday, Beryl rapidly intensified from a tropical storm to a major hurricane in just 42 hours.

Beryl made landfall Monday in the Grenadine Islands north of Grenada as a powerful Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 155 mph, just shy of the minimum Category 5 threshold of 157 mph.

As of 8 a.m. Tuesday, Beryl was about 300 miles southeast of Isla Beata in the Dominican Republic and 625 miles east-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica. The hurricane is traveling west-northwest at 22 mph.

Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 40 miles from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 125 miles.

All of Jamaica and parts of Mexico and Belize were within Beryl’s cone Tuesday. Jamaica has issued a hurricane warning and hurricane conditions are possible there by Wednesday.

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