Hurricane Ernesto bore down on Bermuda on Friday as a category 2 storm, threatening the British island territory with strong winds, a dangerous storm surge and potentially deadly flooding.
Ernesto, centered about 95 miles (150km) south-southwest of the archipelago at 8pm Atlantic Standard Time (0000 GMT on Saturday), was producing sustained winds of up to 100mph (155km/h) and had the potential to drop up to 9in (230mm) of rain, the US National Hurricane Center said.
The center of Ernesto is expected to pass near or over Bermuda on Saturday morning, making conditions ripe for storm surges and flash flooding by the afternoon.
“Folks, be under no illusion. This storm is the real deal,” said Michael Weeks, Bermuda’s national security minister, at a press conference on Friday.
He warned Bermudians to brace for 36 hours of hurricane- and tropical storm-force winds starting on Friday afternoon.
The winds had knocked out power for 5,400 of Bermuda’s 36,000 customers, the power utility Belco said. The company added it had called its repair crews back from the field because it was too dangerous to work.
Warren Darrell, 52, of Smith’s Parish, said he had 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,” 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. A number of tourists and locals were seen roaming around the south shore, while a person was windsurfing as waves grew in size before 2pm.
Bermuda, a collection of 181 small islands clustered more than 600 miles (965km) off the Carolina coast, can expect hurricane conditions to persist until Sunday, the National Hurricane Center director, Michael Brennan, said in an online briefing.
Fewer than a dozen hurricanes have made direct landfall on Bermuda, according to records dating to the 1850s.
Earlier this week, Ernesto grazed Puerto Rico as a tropical storm, bringing heavy rainfall to the US Caribbean territory and cutting 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 notoriously fragile. The island has experienced prolonged power outages in recent years when weather systems much more powerful than Ernesto rolled through.
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 2ft of rain.