Soon To Be Weird, Early Season Hurricane Beryl Menaces Caribbean

Satellite view of a healthy looking Tropical Storm
Beryl early this afternoon has "that look" that suggests
it could turn into a powerful and 
dangerous early season hurricane. 

 Tropical Storm Beryl was gathering steam pretty quickly Saturday out in the open Atlantic. It's behavior seems to hint at the widely predicted very busy Atlantic hurricane season for 2024.  

As of late Saturday morning, Beryl had top winds of 65 mph as it headed toward the Windward Islands. Barbados is already under a hurricane watch, as Beryl should be near that island late Sunday or early Monday. 

Tropical storms and hurricanes absolutely adore very warm ocean water and Beryl is no exception.  The hotter the water, the better chance a storm like this will strengthen.  That's one of the reasons why forecasters were saying this will be a busy hurricane season.

Waters in most of the areas where hurricanes form are at near record high levels.

Those super warm waters make Beryl weird and very much an early bird.  It's developing in an area where hurricanes very often get their act together. But this hurricane incubator zone pretty much never produces tropical storms until late August or September.

That Beryl is forming there is a testament to how unusually hot the water is out there.

Philip Klotzbach, a meteorologist who specializes in Atlantic hurricanes said Saturday Beryl is the strongest tropical storm on record to develop that far east in the Atlantic Ocean.

Normally, if you do manage to get a hurricane in late June or early July, it forms in the Gulf of Mexico, or even further south, near Mexico's Bay of Campeche. 

The hot water under Beryl means it will probably strengthen rapidly on its trek toward the Windward Islands. By the time it gets to near Barbados, its top sustained winds could reach or exceed 110 mph.  Such rapid intensification in this part of the Atlantic is pretty much unheard of early in the season is unheard of.

Once Beryl gets into the Caribbean next week, it's future strength and track are still open to question. Stronger upper level winds could slowly weaken it. We also don't know whether this will eventually threaten the United States or not. 

Meanwhile, there's other areas the National Hurricane Center is watching. Another disturbance in the eastern Atlantic is following roughly the same path as Beryl and could develop into a new tropical storm next week. 

A disturbance near the Gulf of Coast of northeastern Mexico could briefly develop into a tropical storm before it runs inland next week. 

Overall, this whole scenario in the tropical storm and hurricane zone in the Atlantic reminds me of how things usually look when the season usually is ramping up in mid-August.  It's usually pretty quiet in late June. 

This is an ominous sign that all those forecasts of a very busy and potentially destructive Atlantic hurricane season of 2024 might well come true.