By Nicola Muirhead and Tyler Clifford
BERMUDA (Reuters) -Hurricane Ernesto barreled toward Bermuda on Friday as a powerful Category 2 storm likely to produce a foot of rainfall over the weekend and trigger life-threatening flooding and storm surges in the British island territory.
Ernesto, centered about 215 miles (345 km) southwest of the archipelago at 11 a.m. Atlantic time (1400 GMT), was packing sustained winds of up to 100 mph and had the potential to drop up to 15 inches of rain. It would likely make landfall on Saturday morning, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, making conditions ripe for storm surges and flash flooding by the afternoon.
Warren Darrell, 52, of Smith’s Parish, said he stocked up on groceries for his family, battened down the hatches and removed furniture from the lawn in preparation for Ernesto’s arrival
“I’m ready to play games with my daughters and wait for … Sunday morning,” he said. “I’m a bit worried, a little bit worried, but I think we’ll overcome. I think we’ll be fine.”
Winds, torrential rains and rip currents began picking up just before noon at John Smith’s Bay on Bermuda’s Main Island. The government planned to close a causeway bridge linking it to St. George’s Island on Friday night.
Bermuda, a collection of about 181 small islands clustered more than 600 miles off the Carolina coast, can expect hurricane conditions to persist until Sunday, NHC Director Michael Brennan said in an online briefing.
By the time it passes, total rainfall was expected to measure 6 to 12 inches (15 to 30 cm), and up to 15 inches (38 cm) in some areas, the NHC said. Large, destructive waves were expected to crash on the pink, sandy beaches that have made Bermuda an international tourist destination.
Fewer than a dozen hurricanes have made direct landfall on Bermuda, an isolated archipelago far out in the mid-Atlantic and hundreds of miles north of the Caribbean, according to records dating back to the 1850s.
PUERTO RICO POWER OUTAGES
Earlier this week, Ernesto grazed Puerto Rico as a tropical storm, bringing heavy rainfall to the U.S. Caribbean territory and cutting power to about half of its 1.5 million customers. Flood waters made roads impassable, power lines were down and many properties were damaged or destroyed, according to images and video from the island.
About 250,000 homes and businesses remained without power as of Friday morning, according to LUMA Energy, the island’s main electricity distributor. More than 400,000 were in the dark on Thursday and 750,000 on Wednesday.
Puerto Rico’s power grid is notoriously fragile. The island has experienced prolonged power outages in recent years when weather systems much more powerful than Ernesto rolled through.
Hurricanes Fiona in 2022 and Maria in 2017 made landfall in Puerto Rico, with Maria striking the Island as a Category 4 hurricane, or one notch away from the strongest storm classification.
Since Hurricane Irma seven years ago, Puerto Rico’s grid has been in a rebuilding process, and residents have increased their use of renewable power, according to a study by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Despite work to shore up the grid, and $1 billion in federal funding, the island’s main power organizations have failed to balance budgets or stabilize the central power network, said Tom Sanzillo, the institute’s director of finance.
“The grid in Puerto Rico remains in a state of disrepair,” he said.
INTENSE SEASON
Ernesto is the fifth named Atlantic storm of what is expected to be an intense hurricane season. Slow-moving Debby hit Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 1 hurricane just last week before soaking some parts of the Carolinas with up to 2 feet (60 cm) of rain.
Hurricane Beryl, the first of the season, was the earliest recorded Category 5 storm on record in the Atlantic when it swept through the Caribbean and the U.S. Gulf Coast last month, killing dozens of people and costing an estimated $6 billion in damages.
(Reporting by Nicola Muirhead in Bermuda and Tyler Clifford in New York; Additional reporting by Laila Kearney and Liya Cui; Editing by Frank McGurty and David Gregorio)
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