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Hurricane Beryl became the earliest hurricane on record to develop into a category five storm, as warming oceans fuelled destruction across the Caribbean and Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, before it reached Texas on Monday as a category one event.
Beryl was expected to bring winds of 80mph to parts of the Texas coast on Monday, with flash flooding expected along the Gulf coast and eastern Texas, the US National Hurricane Center said.
The hurricane left a trail of devastation as it moved north west across the past week, after beginning last week with maximum sustained wind speeds of about 160mph at its peak.
It reached north-east of the Mexican coastal resort of Tulum with maximum winds near 110mph on Friday, bringing strong winds, dangerous storm surge and heavy rain. After weakening as it travelled through the Caribbean it then gained strength again as it approached the Gulf coast.
The Hurricane Center said Beryl was expected to weaken to a tropical storm as it moved inland in Texas on Monday and then further slow into a tropical depression by Tuesday.
The storm centre was tracking towards Houston, and forecast to bring heavy rain and potential flooding, with 2mn homes and businesses without power by mid-morning on Monday, according to website poweroutage.us.
Beryl first made landfall last Monday on Carriacou, an island that is part of Grenada, as well as hitting St Vincent and the Grenadines, causing widespread damage and several deaths, before battering Jamaica’s southern coast and sweeping past the Cayman Islands.
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Simon Stiell, the head of the UN’s climate change arm who is from Carriacou, said his homeland had been “hammered by Hurricane Beryl”.
“It’s clear that the climate crisis is pushing disasters to record-breaking new levels of destruction,” he said, urging countries to set more ambitious plans to tackle global warming.
“This is not a tomorrow problem. This is happening right now in every economy, including the world’s biggest — disasters on a scale that used to be the stuff of science fiction are becoming meteorological facts, and the climate crisis is the chief culprit.”
The Alliance of Small Island States, a group of about 40 low-lying countries threatened by rising seas across the Caribbean, Pacific, Africa, Indian Ocean and South China Sea, said the hurricane highlighted the urgent need for finance to help them deal with the effects of climate change.
While the “full extent of the losses and damages are yet to be ascertained, lives have been lost, homes have been ground to nothing, shelter, security, memories, history — all gone”, said Aosis chair Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr Pa’olelei Luteru.
Beryl is the second named Atlantic storm this season, following Alberto in June.
In May, the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned that there was an 85 per cent higher chance of an above average hurricane season in the Atlantic this year.
The agency said it expected 17 to 25 named storms bearing winds of 39mph or higher this season. Between eight and 13 of those storms were expected to become hurricanes with wind speeds of 74mph.
Noaa said the rise in storms was linked to a “confluence of factors” that favoured tropical storm formation, including record-breaking ocean temperatures, the expected shift to the naturally occurring La Niña weather phenomenon across the Pacific and reduced Atlantic trade winds that allowed hurricanes to grow in strength without the disruption of strong wind shear.
“Human-caused climate change is warming our ocean globally and in the Atlantic basin and melting ice on land, leading to sea level rise, which increases the risk of storm surge,” Noaa warned.
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