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Hurricane Beryl the first of the 2024 North Atlantic season
Angus Konta, Sunday June 30, 2024 - 13:12 AEST
Hurricane Beryl has become the first hurricane of the 2024 North Atlantic season and is tracking towards the Lesser Antilles – a group of island nations in the eastern Caribbean.
Image: Hurricane Beryl forecast cone with current warnings as of Sat 8pm Atlantic Standard Time (AST). Source: National Hurricane Centre https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at2+shtml/235023.shtml?cone#contents
The US National Hurricane Centre, which administers warnings for systems in the North Atlantic and eastern Pacific, has issued hurricane warnings for most of the Lesser Antilles islands, with sustained winds reaching 65 knots (120km/h) as of Sunday morning Australian time (Saturday afternoon Eastern US). Beryl is expected to become a major (category 3) hurricane by the time it reaches the Lesser Antilles in the next 24 hours, bringing destructive winds near its core exceeding 185km/h, gusting over 220km/h. This is the equivalent of a category 4 tropical cyclone in the Australian region.
In the coming days, Hurricane Beryl is expected to continue to track west, through the Caribbean Sea, potentially impacting the island nation of Jamaica in the coming week and likely advancing towards Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula by the end of the week.
Official advisories issued by the National Hurricane Centre do not extend past Thursday, however there is a strong possibility that Beryl will make its way into the Gulf of Mexico. Looking further ahead, Beryl could potentially turn north and make landfall on the US coast, however it’s too early to tell for sure.
Image: GEPS model’s range of potential tracks for Hurricane Beryl up to 10 days out. Source: Tropical Tidbits https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/storminfo/02L_geps_12z.png
The North Atlantic Hurricane season runs between June and November, although most hurricanes form between August and October. Tropical storms (equivalent to a category 1 or 2 tropical cyclone in Australia) are more common and are far more likely than hurricanes to form in June. In fact, tropical storm Alberto was the first of these systems to form in 2024. In this case, Beryl is not just a rare June hurricane, but also the easternmost June hurricane on record.
Image: Plot of average frequency of hurricanes and tropical storms for the North Atlantic. Source: National Hurricane Centre https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/#bac
On average, there are 24 named systems in the North Atlantic each year, including seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes, however due to near record sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic, the current season is expected to be one of the most active on record. As the season has only just starting up, we can expect hurricane activity to increase quickly through the region in the coming months.
- Weatherzone
© Weatherzone
2024
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