City of Mexico — Early Saturday morning, Hurricane Ernesto hit land on Bermuda, a small British Atlantic island where people were still staying inside. The National Hurricane Center says the hurricane has a big area in the middle that is not raining and is about to pass by Bermuda.
The eye has grown bigger, and Ernesto has slowed down. However, the second half of the storm will still pass over Bermuda on Saturday afternoon.
The wide category 1 storm has winds that can last for up to 80 miles per hour. The National Hurricane Center in the United States warned of strong winds, a dangerous storm surge, and major floods along the coast.
The report said that Bermuda would get between 6 and 9 inches of rain. “This rain is likely to cause severe flash flooding that could kill people, especially in low-lying parts of the island,” the center said.
The Bermuda government said that hurricane-strength winds will last until Saturday afternoon because the storm is so big and moving slowly. Tropical storm-strength winds will last well into Sunday. Ernesto is going about 9 miles per hour toward the north-northeast.
The Bermuda Weather Service said in an update on Saturday morning that a Hurricane warning is still in force.
Michael Weeks, the minister of national security, said, “We want to say again that the storm is not over.”
The Minister said that the Emergency Measures Organization (EMO) is just now getting reports from the Operations Group about the damage that happened yesterday. At this point, they haven’t heard of any big damage.
On the east coast of the United States, the NHC said that dangerous surf and rip currents would reach Canada during the day. Saturday, Ernesto’s center will slowly move away from Bermuda. It will then pass close to southeastern Newfoundland late Monday night and early Tuesday morning.
A power company in Bermuda called BELCO said that more than 26,000 users had lost power as of Saturday afternoon.
The manager of Edgehill Manor Guest House in Bermuda, Lana Morris, said that things are quiet, but the wind has started to pick up again. “I talked to my guests, and they said they are still cozy and have electricity and running water.”
Morris said that she has been calling her friends to talk to them. “They don’t have internet, but the network is down when it’s down.” I’m glad they are safe.
Bermuda is made up of 181 small islands that make up a group. Together, they cover an area about the size of Manhattan.
AccuWeather says that it’s not usual for the eye of a hurricane to hit land in Bermuda. It said that since 1850, only 11 of the 130 tropical storms that came within 100 miles of Bermuda had made contact before today.
The island is a well-known offshore banking center. Its buildings are strong, and because it is higher up, storm surges don’t affect it as much as they do low-lying islands.
Ernesto had already hit the northeast Caribbean hard, leaving hundreds of thousands of people in Puerto Rico without power or water. More than 115,000 of the almost 1.5 million customers who lost power did so more than two days after the storm. Yet another severe-heat alert from the National Weather Service warned of “dangerously hot and humid conditions” for another 170,000 people who did not have access to water.
The 60-year-old Andrés Cabrera lives in the city of Carolina on the north coast and doesn’t have water or electricity. He said, “It’s not easy.”
He, like many others on the island, didn’t have enough money to buy a generator or solar cells. Cabrera said that the only thing that was making him feel better was “the wind that comes in from the street.”
Officials said they hoped to get power back on for 90% of Puerto Rico’s 1.5 million people by Sunday, but they haven’t said when they think power will be back on for everyone.
The Virgin Islands Department of Education said that all public schools will be open again on Monday after cleaning up and getting rid of the trash.
Public school classes in Puerto Rico were also set to begin on Monday, almost a week after they were supposed to.
We have now had five named storms this year, and Ernesto is the third hurricane.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that this year’s Atlantic storm season will be above average because the oceans are warmer than usual. It said there would be 17 to 25 named storms, with 4 to 7 major hurricanes.
