Hurricane Ernesto nears Bermuda, flooding likely
2024.08.16 09:59
(Reuters) – Hurricane Ernesto barreled toward Bermuda on Friday morning as a powerful Category 2 storm that was likely to produce a foot of rainfall over the weekend and trigger life-threatening flooding and storm surges.
Ernesto, centered about 250 miles (400 km) southwest of the British island territory at 8 a.m. Atlantic time (1100 GMT), was packing sustained winds of up to 100 mph, making conditions ripe for dangerous storm surge and flash flooding in Bermuda by Saturday afternoon, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
It was moving in a north-northeast direction at 13 mph.
Total rainfall in Bermuda, a collection of about 181 small islands clustered more than 600 miles off the Carolina coast, could measure 6 to 12 inches (15 to 30 cm), and up to 15 inches (38 cm) in some areas, the NHC said.
Large, destructive waves are expected to roll into the pink, sandy beaches of Bermuda, an international financial center that is home to about 65,000 residents and a tourist magnet.
Earlier in the week, Ernesto grazed Puerto Rico as a tropical storm, bringing heavy rainfall to the U.S. Caribbean territory and cutting power to about half of its 1.5 million customers. Flood waters made roads impassable, power lines were down and many properties were damaged or destroyed, according to images and video from the island.
Some 236,000 homes and businesses remained without electricity in Puerto Rico as of Friday morning, according to LUMA Energy, the island’s main electricity distributor. More than 400,000 were without power on Thursday and 750,000 on Wednesday.
Fewer than a dozen hurricanes have made direct landfall on Bermuda, according to records dating back to the 1850s.
Hurricanes Gonzalo in 2014 and Fabian in 2003 caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and caused widespread power outages. Fabian, which killed four people, was the first fatal storm in Bermuda since the 1920s.
Ernesto is the fifth named Atlantic storm of what is expected to be an intense hurricane season. Slow-moving Debby hit Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 1 hurricane just last week before soaking some parts of the Carolinas with up to 2 feet (60 cm) of rain.
Hurricane Beryl, the first of the season, was the earliest recorded Category 5 hurricane on record in the Atlantic when it swept through the Caribbean and the U.S. Gulf Coast last month, killing dozens of people and costing an estimated $6 billion in damages.
