Family members survey their home destroyed by Hurricane Beryl, in Ottley Hall, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, on Tuesday. Beryl is the most powerful storm to form this early in the Atlantic hurricane season.superlatives. It is the most powerful hurricane ever recorded this early in the Atlantic hurricane season, and also the earliest storm to strengthen so rapidly as it formed.
What is not normal is the timing. Beryl is the earliest storm to ever undergo that kind of rapid intensification. Usually, rapidly intensifying major hurricanes don’t form until later in the summer and the early fall, when water temperatures in the tropical Atlantic peak and hurricane activity is at its highest.
“With a warming climate, we should be expecting more of these storms to rapidly intensify,” says Jennifer Collins, a professor in the School of Geosciences at the University of South Florida. But while many climate models suggest that storms will gain strength more quickly as the Earth heats up, it’s still unclear whether that’s already happening.