TULUM, Mexico (NEWSnet/AP) — Hurricane Beryl moved over open water late Thursday toward Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, on a path that is forecast to send the storm toward the Mexico-U.S. border.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Beryl, which had become the earliest Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic, had weakened Thursday which resulted in the Hurricane 3 status.

Jack Beven, senior hurricane specialist at the U.S. Hurricane Center, said “the biggest immediate threat now that the storm is moving away from the Cayman Islands is landfall in the Yucatan Peninsula.”

 

In the meantime, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador issued a statement saying Beryl may make a direct hit on Tulum, which, while smaller than Cancun, still holds thousands of tourists and residents.

Beryl was expected to bring heavy rain and winds to Mexico’s Caribbean coast, before crossing the Yucatan peninsula and restrengthening in the Gulf of Mexico to make a second strike on northeast Mexico.

Beryl’s worst damage appeared to be behind it. Its eye wall brushed by Jamaica’s southern coast on Wednesday afternoon while on Thursday morning, telephone poles and trees were blocking the roadways in Kingston.

Over the past days, Beryl has damaged or destroyed 95% of homes on a pair of islands in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, jumbled fishing boats in Barbados and ripped off roofs in Jamaica before rumbling past the Cayman Islands early Thursday.

There have been nine deaths attributed to Beryl.

Impact on the U.S.

 

Once Beryl re-emerges into the Gulf of Mexico, forecasters say it could hit right around the Mexico-U.S. border, at Matamoros.

That area was already soaked in June by Tropical Storm Alberto.

Tropical Storm Alleta

 

Separately, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Thursday that Tropical Storm Alleta had formed in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico’s coast.

Aletta, which was located about 190 miles from Manzanillo and had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph, was forecast to head away from land and dissipate by the weekend.

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