Hurricane Beryl strengthened into a top-level category 5 storm after it swept across several islands in the southeastern Caribbean, dumping heavy rain and unleashing devastating winds.
Beryl is now the earliest category 5 storm in the Atlantic on record and has developed into a “potentially catastrophic” hurricane, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
The NHC said in its latest update early on Tuesday that Beryl was “still intensifying,” with recent data showing maximum sustained winds had increased to almost 165 miles (265 kilometres) per hour.
Grenada’s Carriacou Island took a direct hit from the storm’s “extremely dangerous eyewall” early Monday, the NHC said.
Nearby islands, including St Vincent and the Grenadines, also experienced “catastrophic winds and [a] life-threatening storm surge,” it said.
“In half an hour, Carriacou was flattened,” Dickon Mitchell, Grenada’s prime minister, told a news conference.