29/06/2024
29/06/2024

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, June 29, (AP): Tropical Storm Beryl chugged toward the southeast Caribbean on Saturday and could strengthen into the year's first hurricane before reaching Barbados late Sunday.
A hurricane watch was issued for Barbados as the island's meteorological service warned of flash flooding and power outages and said the storm's center was forecast to pass some 26 miles (45 kilometers) south of the island.
Early Saturday, Beryl was located about 975 miles (1,570 kilometers) east-southeast of Barbados, with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph (80 kph). It was moving west at 21 mph (33 kph).
"We need to be ready,” Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley said in a public address late Friday. "You and I know when these things happen, it is better to plan for the worst and pray for the best.”
She noted that thousands of people are in Barbados for the Twenty20 World Cup cricket final, with India and South Africa playing in the capital, Bridgetown, on Saturday.
Beryl is the second named storm in what is predicted to be a busy hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30 in the Atlantic. Earlier this month, Tropical Storm Alberto came ashore in northeast Mexico with heavy rains that resulted in four deaths.
"The development of a tropical storm this far east in the tropical Atlantic is uncommon, though not unprecedented,” wrote Michael Lowry, a Florida-based hurricane expert, in a forecast. "Only five named storms on record have formed in the tropical Atlantic east of the Caribbean.”
Of those, only one hurricane of record has formed east of the Caribbean in June, he added.