Hurricane Beryl gains power as it nears populated Caribbean islands

Barrels continued to intensify this morning. Maximum sustained winds are up now into near 150 mph. Right now. The eye of barrel is right over Carriacou Island just to the north of Grenada and it's moving off to the West northwest at 20 miles an hour. And you can see the very well defined eye in both visible and infrared satellite imagery. Barrel has restrengthened this morning as it's gone through an eyewall replacement cycle. So now is when we're experiencing those catastrophic category four wind conditions in portions of the Grenadines, places like Union Island, Palm Island, Petite Martinique, Petite Saint Vincent, Cariaku, those are the areas that are most threatened now with both those devastating. Four winds as well as the storm surge of 6 to 9 feet above normal tide levels, especially near and to the north, even up towards Saint Vincent where we could see, you know, life threatening storm surge and inundation, especially if some of those smaller islands in the Grenadines between Saint Vincent and Grenada. So very serious situation for anyone who is watching in those areas. If you are in the eye, do not go out in the eye. It's not safe. The storm is moving very quickly in the backside of the eyewall will move in on over you very, very fast and you do not want to be outside in those conditions. What barrels going to do over the next several days, These are the chances of hurricane force winds. We're most concerned about downstream about seeing hurricane force winds in Jamaica and a hurricane watch has been issued for that island. As of this morning. There is a potential for barrel to remain a hurricane, a powerful hurricane across the Caribbean Sea. There is also a chance of hurricane force winds extending as far westward as to portions of the Yucatan Peninsula later this week. The arrival time of those tropical storm force winds as we look through the week in Jamaica would be a early Wednesday morning. And then stretching into places like the Cayman Islands Wednesday evening, western Cuba Thursday morning if they were to reach there, and then the Yucatan Peninsula by Thursday evening along the coast of Belize up to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.