With Beryl Breaking Records Six Weeks Into Hurricane Season, Scientists Worry About What's Next
The poignancy was unmistakable: prognosticators at Colorado State University amended their already miserable seasonal tropical cyclone forecast on Monday precisely as Hurricane Beryl was filling Houston’s streets with floodwater and knocking out power to more than 2m homes and businesses. “A likely harbinger of a hyperactive season” was how CSU researchers characterized Beryl, which set numerous records on the way to its Texas landfall, including the earliest category 5 hurricane, strongest ever June storm, and most powerful to strike the southern Windward Islands.
In the Caribbean, the storm caused almost unprecedented destruction, and killed dozens from Grenada to the US. With the six-month Atlantic hurricane season only six weeks old, and a monster storm such as those only usually seen in the later, peak months already in the books, climate scientists fear for what’s to come. They also warn that nobody should be surprised about the eye-popping start to the 2024 season, or the rapid intensification of Beryl from a modest tropical storm into a deadly 165mph cyclone, because of “crazy” ocean heat that acts like rocket fuel for developing hurricanes.
“It’s a big wake-up call, certainly for folks in the US and throughout the Caribbean, that a greater risk for more extreme hurricanes is certainly there, and with warmer waters into the late spring we’re getting an earlier start to the hurricane season,” Brett Anderson, senior climate scientist with AccuWeather, told the Guardian.
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Beryl, meanwhile, reinforced one often overlooked aspect of a coastal hurricane strike, the spawning of tornados and flooding far inland that can be equally as destructive and deadly. Beryl’s reach extended as far as New England, and caused fatalities in Texas, Louisiana, Vermont. AccuWeather’s initial estimate of economic loss in the US is up to $32bn. “People need to be prepared for these kinds of storms,” said Matt Marshall, AccuWeather’s senior director for strategic projects.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/13/hurricane-beryl-climate-scientists