Record-breaking Hurricane Beryl has left a deadly and destructive trail in the Caribbean and is heading toward the Yucatan Peninsula and possibly six US states.
Multiple model forecast trackers show Beryl making landfall in Mexico early Friday morning, with its impacts reaching Texas.
The National Hurricane Center has officially added parts of Texas to the forecast cone.
But a model presented by hurricane expert Dr Levi Cowan shows five additional states possibly in the path of the hurricane that has killed at least seven people in Jamaica.
The spaghetti model shows Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, also potentially getting hit.
‘It’s really dependent on where the hurricane is launching from by the time we get to Friday,’ Dr Cowan told the Daily Mail.
‘If it’s coming off the Yucatan Peninsula far enough North, it may continue gaining latitude and threaten the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico, that could mean northern Mexico or Texas and the US Gulf Coast could be threatened.’
US states could be spared if Beryl becomes a weaker storm and continues westward into the eastern part of Mexico.
But if its level of pressure drops, Beryl will likely barrel north toward the US.
‘For now, residents along the Gulf Coast from eastern Mexico to Texas should monitor forecast updates closely and have their hurricane plans ready to go,’ stated The Weather Channel on Thursday afternoon.
The Category 4 storm ripped through Jamaica on Wednesday with heavy rainfall and powerful winds. At least 500 people were displaced into shelters and power was shuttered in many parts of Kingston.
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness in the evening said that the country had not witnessed the ‘worst of what could possibly happen’ and, ‘we can do as much as we can do, as humanly possible, and we leave the rest in the hands of God’.
On Monday, Beryl became the earliest Category 5 hurricane to ever form in the Atlantic. Its winds reached 165mph on Tuesday, and it then weakened to a Category 4.
Beryl has killed at least three people in Grenada and Carriacou and three others in northern Venezuela.
It is the first strong hurricane to strike the southeast Caribbean since Hurricane Ivan two decades ago which left dozens of people dead in Grenada.
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