Hurricane Beryl makes landfall as Caribbean braces for days ahead | BBC News

Category 4 Hurricane Barrel has made

landfall

on the Caribbean island of Karaku in Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines are also at risk of being hit, forecasters say this is extremely dangerous, with winds exceeding 25 kilometers per hour. Now, from meteorologist Dr. Ryan, try to find out more about this storm. Welcome to you, thank you very much for being with us. Tell us more about how

hurricane

s form, so Hurricane Barrel developed from what's called an easterly wave, which is a pretty typical mode or mechanism by which. The storms form later in the

hurricane

season in August and September and what we see is that type of wave of wind change that will move off the coast of West Africa and move east to west across the tropical Atlantic as that moves over warm areas.

The waters organize slowly and can become a tropical storm or hurricane again, which is not unusual, but what is so unusual in the case of the barrel is that this is happening much earlier in the year, than these waves of the This is the first time that a Category 4 hurricane has formed anywhere in the Atlantic, the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico, and why are the waters over which Hurricane Barrel moved over the last three or four

days

. Are they so warm now in late June and early July? as it would normally be late August or early September at the peak of hurricane season, then the hurricane doesn't really know what time of year it is, all it knows is that it is moving through a very favorable environment where the upper level winds support growth and thermodynamically it is getting a big boost because these waters are much warmer than they would normally be at this time of year and this is a category 4.

As I said, what determines the strength of a hurricane, so the way we classify hurricanes is What's called the Saffr Simpson scale, we classify hurricanes on a scale from 1 to five and their only classification only takes into account the maximum sustained wind, so that's one limited perspective on a hurricane, but another is how big it is and how much rain. is being produced by it, how much buildup is occurring, so you know we classify hurricanes by maximum sustained wind, but there are other ways to look at it as well, and by any measure, Barrel is a catastrophic, devastating, high-impact storm. , and when we say, you know, when you look at the factors that go into determining its strength, tell us a little more about how it works, what determines that it is category 4, is it the strength of the winds, the temperature of the water, Yes, it is the force, the maximum force of the wind, it is how we now categorize the factors that intervene for a tropical wave to become a powerful hurricane, among them, how warm and deep the ocean waters are, if there is enough humidity At low levels of the atmosphere, the winds at the upper levels of the atmosphere are favorable for storm activity to spread and ventilate.

Those are all key considerations and in this case with Barrel as it approached the Lesser Antilles, all of those factors were extremely favorable for intensification and you mentioned that this is the earliest you've seen a hurricane this strong or that meteorologists have seen H. To what extent do you attribute it to global warming and climate change? Well, I think there is some climate change component at play here. I don't think we would have waters that are at uh 28 29 Celsius approaching the Lesser Antilles if they weren't getting a boost from climate change, so you know in situations like this you can't put too much emphasis on it.

I don't know if Barrel would have happened with or without climate change, but I think it's scary to say that in these types of cases you're at least seeing a category boost or two because the ocean waters are so favorably warm, okay? Ryan TR. Really interesting to know your opinion. Thank you very much for joining us from Florida. I apreciate it.