KALAIN HO­SEIN

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad has been placed un­der a Trop­i­cal Storm Watch by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice, while To­ba­go re­mains un­der a Hur­ri­cane Warn­ing as Hur­ri­cane Beryl is set to move across the re­gion on Mon­day morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTMS:

“Though the stronger hur­ri­cane and trop­i­cal storm force winds are ex­pect­ed to be close­ly packed around the cen­tre of Beryl, there is a low to mar­gin­al­ly medi­um chance (10-30%) of trop­i­cal storm force winds af­fect­ing Trinidad, from ear­ly morn­ing on Mon­day, 1st Ju­ly, as Beryl ap­proach­es the south­ern Wind­wards.”

For Trinidad, this means that trop­i­cal storm con­di­tions, in­clud­ing sus­tained winds of 63-118 KM/H, are pos­si­ble some­where with­in the watch area, in this case with­in 24 hours.

An image showing the extent of the orange level hurricane warning for Tobago. [Image courtesy Met Service]

For To­ba­go, which is un­der a Hur­ri­cane Warn­ing, this means there is a high­er po­ten­tial for hur­ri­cane con­di­tions, in­clud­ing sus­tained winds in ex­cess of 100 KM/H, with­in the warn­ing area, with­in the next 30 hours.

As of 11:00 AM, Hur­ri­cane Beryl was cen­tred near 10.7N 54.9W, about 640 km east-south­east of To­ba­go, with max­i­mum sus­tained winds of 195 KM/H. Beryl is mov­ing west­ward near 34 KM/H.

Beryl is a Cat­e­go­ry 3 hur­ri­cane on the Saf­fir-Simp­son Hur­ri­cane Wind Scale.  Some ad­di­tion­al strength­en­ing is fore­cast through tonight, and Beryl is ex­pect­ed to be­come an ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous Cat­e­go­ry 4 hur­ri­cane be­fore it reach­es the Wind­ward Is­lands, ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter.

A Hur­ri­cane Warn­ing is in ef­fect for Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, while a Trop­i­cal Storm Warn­ing is in ef­fect for Mar­tinique, and a Trop­i­cal Storm Watch is in ef­fect for Do­mini­ca as well.

The TTMS says it con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the sys­tem and will is­sue an­oth­er up­date at 2:00 PM to­day.