Hurricane Ernesto reached Bermuda on Friday as a Category 2 storm, threatening the British island territory with strong winds, dangerous storm surges and potentially deadly flooding.
The US National Hurricane Center said Ernesto, located about 95 miles (150 km) south-southwest of the islands at 8 pm Atlantic Standard Time (0000 GMT Saturday), had sustained winds of up to 100 mph (155 kph) and was likely to produce up to 9 inches (230 mm) of rain.
The center of Ernesto is expected to pass near or over Bermuda on Saturday morning, causing storm surge and flash flooding by the afternoon.
“Friends, make no illusions. This storm is real,” Bermuda’s National Security Minister Michael Weeks said at a news conference on Friday.
He warned Bermudians to prepare for 36 hours of hurricane and tropical storm force winds beginning Friday afternoon.
Electric utility Belco said the winds had knocked out power to 5,400 of Bermuda’s 36,000 customers. The company said it had pulled its repair crews from the field because the work was too dangerous.
Warren Darrell, 52, of Smith Parish, said he had stocked up on groceries for his family, locked doors and moved furniture off the lawn in preparation for Ernesto’s arrival.
“I’m ready to go back to playing with my daughters and looking forward to it,” he said. “I’m a little worried, a little anxious, but I think we’ll get through it. I think we’ll be fine.”
Gusty winds, torrential rain and strong currents began blowing just before noon in John Smith’s Bay on Bermuda’s main island. The government planned to close the bridge connecting to St. George’s Island on Friday night. Several tourists and locals were seen walking along the southern shore as waves grew in size just before 2 p.m., while one person was windsurfing.
Hurricane conditions were expected to remain in Bermuda, a group of 181 small islands located 600 miles (965 km) off the Carolina coast, until Sunday, National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan said in an online briefing.
According to records dating back to the 1850s, fewer than a dozen hurricanes have directly struck Bermuda.
Power outages in Puerto Rico
Hurricane Ernesto hit Puerto Rico as a tropical storm earlier this week, bringing heavy rainfall to the U.S. Caribbean territory and knocking out power to about half of its 1.5 million customers.
About 250,000 homes and businesses remained without power as of Friday morning, according to Luma Energy, the island’s main electricity distributor.
Puerto Rico’s power grid is extremely fragile. In recent years, when weather systems have been more powerful than Ernesto, the island has experienced long power outages.
Ernesto is the fifth named storm in the Atlantic in what is expected to be an intense hurricane season. Slow-moving Debby just made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast last week as a Category 1 hurricane, before dumping up to 2 feet of rain on parts of the Carolinas.