While Hurricane Beryl is expected to maintain its intensity after becoming a Category 5 storm and making landfall in the southeast Caribbean late Monday night, the storm is not on track to affect Maine’s weather forecast.
The storm is currently tracking south of Cuba according to the National Weather Service, and is on track to strike Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. It is the earliest storm in meteorological history to have reached a Category 4 classification in June, and is the earliest Category 5 storm to form in the Atlantic, fueled by record water temperatures.
Because the hurricane is on a southward path toward the Yucatan Peninsula, some rain will travel through the western gulf states, while winds will continue to move southward from the path of the hurricane, according to the NWS.
According to a spokesperson with the Gray NWS office, in order for tropical storms to have any noticeable impact in Maine they would need to move up the Atlantic seaboard, making landfall along the Massachusetts coast.
Tropical storms don’t typically ramp up along the eastern seaboard until the end of August, as that is when temperatures in the Gulf of Maine reach seasonal highs. Storms would also need to coincide with the high tide in order to produce damaging storm surges.
Maine was battered by Hurricane Lee last September, when the storm system made landfall as a post-tropical cyclone. The storm winds caused numerous power outages across the state, flooding and damage to Maine’s coast.
Intense storms, both during the end of the hurricane season and well into Maine’s winter months, are becoming more frequent as waters in the Gulf of Maine, and across the world, warm up. The storms have had impacts on Maine’s fisheries and coastal towns, who spend weeks recovering from storm damages.
