Hurricane Beryl is a tenacious storm on its second act as it heads toward landfall on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula to end the week.
Days after slamming the Antilles as a high-end hurricane with destructive winds, Beryl is on track to lash Mexico’s Tulum area with high winds, flooding rains, and dangerous coastal flooding.
The storm will then enter the Gulf of Mexico for its final charge toward Mexico’s East Coast or the western U.S. Gulf Coast early next week. Forecasters will then closely watch the remnants of the storm.
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Slightly unfavourable conditions around Beryl finally forced the storm to lose major hurricane status on Thursday as the system’s winds dropped to 175 km/h, making it a strong Category 2 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
Despite the weakening, this remains a dangerous hurricane as it steadily tracks toward its second landfall on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Friday morning.
Forecasters with the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) expect Beryl to make landfall very near the city of Tulum, which is a popular destination for Canadian visitors.
Communities in the path of the storm can expect damaging winds, flooding rains of 100+ mm in spots, as well as life-threatening storm surge flooding along the coast.
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Beryl will spend the day traversing the Yucatan Peninsula before emerging in the southern Gulf of Mexico on Friday night as it turns slightly more toward the northwest.
Very warm waters in the Gulf may allow the system to regain some strength and organization heading into the weekend as it makes its final track toward Mexico’s northeastern coast or the Texas coast by the beginning of next week.
After landfall, it’s likely that the heat dome over the southeastern U.S. will steer Beryl’s remnants over the region. It’s tough to say what, if any, impacts the storm’s remnants could have on Canada since the potential is more than a week out. However, we could watch muggy weather inch northward through the workweek.
Beryl’s historic run
Hurricane Beryl is a historic storm. Over the past couple of days, the storm has set records for:
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the earliest Category 5 hurricane on record, beating 2005’s Hurricane Emily
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the earliest Category 4 hurricane on record, beating 2005’s Hurricane Dennis
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the earliest hurricane so far east in the tropical Atlantic on record
This is also the first time since 1966 we’ve seen a major hurricane before the July 4th holiday.
Experts largely agree that we’re in for a very active Atlantic hurricane season in the weeks and months to come. Sea surface temperatures throughout the Atlantic are running several degrees hotter than normal, closer to what you’d expect in September than the end of June.
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These abnormally hot waters will combine with the lower wind shear brought on by a developing La Niña in the eastern Pacific to foster extremely favourable conditions for tropical cyclone development through the peak of the season this fall.
The latest seasonal outlooks call for as many as two-dozen named storms, which is far more than the 14 tropical storms we’d see during a typical Atlantic hurricane season.
Stay with The Weather Network for all the latest on this busy hurricane season.
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