Hurricane Beryl, which devastated the island of Grenada on Tuesday and is now heading toward Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, broke records as the fastest hurricane to reach Category 4 and Category 5 strength in the Atlantic Basin. Wind speeds of at least 100 miles per hour were recorded on Monday.
“There are a lot of superlative adjectives to describe Hurricane Beryl, given its timing, location and strength,” said Jonathan Zawislack, meteorologist and flight director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Zawislak is a hurricane hunter, a title held by about 30 to 40 scientists, data processors and pilots based in Lakeland, Florida, who fly into hurricanes in three planes nicknamed Gonzo, Kermit and Miss Piggy. Both Kermit and Miss Piggy are equipped with Doppler radars in their bellies and tails that allow scientists to create 3-D images of the storms.
Over the past three days, Dr. Zawislak and his team have flown from St. Croix, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands, to Kermit to navigate the swirling eyewall of Hurricane Beryl. In a Category 4 or 5 storm like Beryl, the eyewall — the ring of thunderstorms, heavy rain and dangerous winds that surrounds the center of the storm — is accompanied by loud noise and turbulence.
“It's like riding a rollercoaster at a car wash, you never know when it's going to go up or down or what direction it's going to take next,” Dr Zawislak said on Tuesday as Beryl prepared for its third reconnaissance flight.
But the eye of the storm is calm: During daytime flights, Dr. Zawislak can look out of a bubble window at the back of the cockpit and see clear blue skies and calm clouds.
His job is to navigate the chaos and find a path that will keep Kermit flying between 8,000 and 10,000 feet while maintaining an airspeed of just 210 knots, and keep the plane from flying against the wind.
Jonathan Shannon, a spokesman for NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center, said the purpose of these flights is to provide better data to prepare for emergencies, especially with fast-changing hurricane conditions.
Since Dr. Zawislak's first flight on Sunday, Hurricane Beryl has intensified rapidly, increasing its wind speed by more than 35 mph in 24 hours. Part of this change is due to an eyewall replacement cycle, or what Dr. Zawislak calls the “ice skater effect,” in which the storm contracts like a figure skater pulling her arms tight as she spins. Drawing energy from warm ocean waters, the storm replaces the old eye with a new one and rearranges its outer wall.
As the Earth's atmosphere warms, more storms are experiencing these rapid intensification events, and a recent study found that the rate at which Atlantic hurricanes become rapidly intensified has doubled, at least in part due to man-made climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
Beryl marked a dire beginning to what oceanographer Hosmay Lopez of NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory said was the “most aggressive” forecast the agency has ever made for the Atlantic hurricane season. NOAA is predicting an above-average hurricane season with four to seven major storms with wind speeds of more than 111 mph.
The forecast is based on a shift in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a natural weather pattern linked to a warming tropical Pacific Ocean, which is moving from neutral to La Niña. The combination of mild conditions produced by La Niña and anomalously warm ocean temperatures is increasing the likelihood of Atlantic hurricanes forming.
As hurricanes move, they churn up the ocean's surface, stirring up cold water from deep below and slowing the storm's energy, much like stirring a cup of coffee does. But in addition to the abnormally warm sea surface temperatures that have been breaking records for more than a year, waters deep in the ocean are also warmer than normal.
“In this case, the coffee cup is so tall that even if there's a strong wind blowing, it's very hard to stir up the cold water from below,” Dr Lopez said. With warmer temperatures at greater depths, the storm would draw more energy from the ocean, he said.
Hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, but historically has been quiet in June and July before becoming active in August. Hurricane Beryl formed about two weeks earlier than the previous record-holder for earliest Category 5 storm, Hurricane Emily in 2005.