Hurricane Ernesto brings heavy rain and wind as it passes Puerto Rico
Ernesto intensified from a tropical storm to a hurricane, bringing damaging winds and heavy rains as it passed north of Puerto Rico.
Ernesto intensified into a Category 1 hurricane on Wednesday as it raged north of Puerto Rico, unleashing torrential rains and damaging winds that prompted flash flood warnings and led to power outages across nearly half the island.
By 8 p.m. Eastern Time, Ernesto had already passed well beyond Puerto Rico and was located 180 miles (290 kilometers) east-northeast of the island of Grand Turk. According to the National Hurricane Center, it was packing sustained winds that had now increased to 75 mph (120 km/h).
The storm moved northwest toward Bermuda, a British island territory about 720 miles away. According to the NHC, Ernesto could become a Category 3 hurricane by Friday before reaching Bermuda on Saturday. The Bermuda Weather Service issued a hurricane warning.
The storm lashed Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands for most of Wednesday, quickly dumping several inches of rain. Overall, the U.S. and British Virgin Islands were expecting up to 6 inches of rainfall, while totals in southeastern Puerto Rico could rise to as much as 8 to 10 inches.
Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi said the power outages had also left more than 200,000 homes and businesses without water.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for Puerto Rico and called on the federal government to help with local relief efforts. Ahead of the storm, authorities in Puerto Rico closed government offices, shuttered schools, activated the National Guard and opened hundreds of shelters.
Meteorologists expect Ernesto to drift through the warm waters of the western Atlantic toward Bermuda for several days before eventually developing into a major hurricane and remaining well east of the U.S. mainland.
Ernesto: Track the storm’s path as it heads toward Puerto Rico
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As many as 730,000 electricity customers – almost exactly half of all customers in the U.S. territory – were temporarily without power on Wednesday after Ernesto brought tropical storm gusts and heavy rain to the island of more than three million U.S. citizens.
By 8 p.m. Eastern time, only 649,000 homes and businesses had lost power, or 44 percent, according to LUMA Energy, which operates Puerto Rico’s power grid. The company supplies 1.47 million customers.
“We are in the process of restoring service,” said LUMA President Juan Saca. He did not give an estimate of when that might happen islandwide, but said 1,500 of the company’s employees were working on it. As of Wednesday evening, more than 60 percent of customers in four of LUMA’s seven regions still had no power.
Power outages have been commonplace in Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria destroyed the power grid in 2017.
The numerous flash flood warnings in place across Puerto Rico for most of Wednesday gave a glimpse of the sodden landscape left behind by Ernesto, but it was nowhere near as stark as the sight of cows wading through neck-deep water.
This is the image captured on video by El Nuevo Dia, Puerto Rico’s leading newspaper, which says rising water levels in the Gurabo River in the central-eastern part of the island are forcing cows to “fight for their lives.”
The newspaper also reported that heavy rains caused mudslides and left some communities without drinking water. Numerous roads across the island were impassable due to flooding and fallen trees or other objects such as power lines. More than 80 medical facilities, including at least 20 hospitals, had to run on generators due to the power outages, El Nuevo Dia reported.
Temperatures of up to 34 degrees and humidity of just over 27 degrees are forecast for San Juan over the next few days and the coming week. This means miserable conditions for hundreds of thousands of people without electricity.
Two of the three U.S. Virgin Islands – St. John and St. Croix – were completely in the dark on Wednesday as authorities worked to restore supplies after Ernesto.
Daryl Jaschen, director of the Virgin Islands Territorial Emergency Management Agency, said in a press conference Wednesday that in addition to the outages, six cell towers across the territory had also gone offline.
U.S. Virgin Islands Governor Albert Bryan Jr. said at the same press conference that “the area is in good condition” but urged residents and tourists not to venture outdoors as rains continued to lash the islands.
“There are a lot of branches lying on the road, a lot of water coming down from the hills on all three islands – and occasional flooding occurs,” he said.
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As Ernesto hit Puerto Rico early Wednesday morning, authorities issued flash flood warnings and the National Hurricane Center reported destructive wind gusts.
By 7 a.m., between 2 and 6 inches of rain had fallen in parts of Puerto Rico, and another 2 to 3 inches were forecast. “Flash flooding is underway or expected shortly,” the weather service in San Juan said.
As rainfall increases, “the level of the Rio Grande de Loiza and its tributaries continues to rise and the risk of flooding continues to increase,” the weather service said, adding that rivers were likely to overflow their banks.
Meanwhile, St. John and St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands received between 3 and 5 inches of rainfall through Wednesday morning, prompting the weather service to warn of “life-threatening flash flooding in streams and rivers, in urban areas, on highways, roads and underpasses.”
According to the National Weather Service in San Juan, a wind gust of 86 miles per hour was measured on Culebra, a small island off the east coast that belongs to Puerto Rico. A team from the National Weather Service in Ceiba in northeastern Puerto Rico recorded a gust of 74 miles per hour. Wind speeds of up to 75 miles per hour were measured in the Virgin Islands, the weather service said.
In Bermuda, Jessica Burns said she woke up to torrential rain Wednesday morning and is preparing for much worse this weekend when Hurricane Ernesto could arrive as a Category 2 storm, according to the Bermuda Weather Service.
Burns, 29, said she was born and raised on the island, but this will be her first summer at the helm of the family’s vacation rental business after her mother passed away in November 2023.
Burns, neighbors and staff trimmed loose branches and removed coconuts from the trees “to make sure there was no danger of them coming loose and causing damage,” she said.
Burns said she has also stocked up on food, batteries and water. “We’re all going to the supermarket and stocking up on supplies like we did during COVID,” she said.
Some vacationers checked out of Burns’ Southern Views Property Rentals early this week because they wanted to avoid Ernesto. Other guests “hid” with staff and were given a free extra night to stay safe and dry, she said.
− Claire Thornton
While Ernesto is not expected to make landfall in the United States, authorities warned of potentially dangerous conditions on beaches along the American Atlantic coast, including rip currents and heavy surf, as the storm approaches Bermuda.
The U.S. Coast Guard on Monday warned recreational sailors, fishermen, beachgoers and water sports enthusiasts in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico not to enter the water “due to deteriorating sea conditions and dangerous surf rip currents associated with Tropical Storm Ernesto.”
Meteorologists said strong waves would hit North Carolina beaches starting Friday and advised beachgoers to be aware of the risks and dangers.
“The storm could be hundreds of miles out to sea and the weather could look great on beaches along Florida, the Carolinas and even into New England, but everyone should be aware of the risks and dangers on the beaches,” said Alex DaSilva, AccuWeather’s senior hurricane forecaster. “We expect the threat of rip currents along the U.S. Atlantic coast to begin in the southeast later this week and intensify and spread northward over the weekend.”
In a revised forecast released earlier this month, the federal government predicted an “extremely active” Atlantic hurricane season that could be among the strongest on record. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted 17 to 24 named storms, of which about 8 to 13 would reach hurricane strength, compared to an average of 14 named storms and seven hurricanes.
NOAA chief Rick Spinrad said in a statement that the season had started “early and fierce,” with Hurricane Beryl being the earliest Category 5 Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. He added that the agency’s update means the peak of hurricane season, which typically includes the strongest storms and hurricanes, is near.
Overall, NOAA puts the probability of an above-average hurricane season at 90 percent, one of the highest probabilities ever given by the agency, Matthew Rosencrans, the agency’s lead seasonal hurricane forecaster, told USA TODAY.
Ernesto appeared in the Atlantic Ocean as residents and authorities in the eastern United States were still recovering from the effects of former Tropical Storm Debby.
Debby made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region last week as a Category 1 hurricane before the storm’s remnants caused widespread flooding along the East Coast, inundating entire neighborhoods as authorities conducted water rescues and evacuations. At least eight people were killed by the storm.
In July, Hurricane Beryl devastated the Caribbean as a major hurricane before hitting Texas, causing massive power outages that resulted in several fatal heat stroke cases. Beryl is linked to more than 20 deaths in the United States and the Caribbean.
Contributors: Doyle Rice and Dinah Voyles Pulver, USA TODAY; CA Bridges, Palm Beach Post; Reuters
