A writer for San Diego Community News Group who was caught in the eye of Hurricane Beryl!

After leaving a trail of destruction across a number of southeastern Caribbean nations, Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Mexico at 6:05 a.m. EST on Friday, July 5, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Even though extremely dangerous winds and rain had already occurred for over an hour, hurricanes aren’t said to make “landfall” until the surface center (the eye) intersects with a coastline. Radar and surface observations put the center of Hurricane Beryl at 5 miles northeast of Tulum on Mexico’s popular Riviera Maya coastline on the Yucatán Peninsula.

The location right where my family and I were starting a week-long summer vacation at a resort within a few miles of where Hurricane Beryl was documented as having made landfall. We found ourselves among the 1,211 guests staying at Bahía Principe Akumal on the morning of July 5. Planned in advance as a high school graduation present and special trip before our daughter leaves for college this fall, we were prepared for the pool, the beach and snorkeling with turtles, but not to meet Beryl.

According to the NHC, Hurricane Beryl was the earliest Category 5 hurricane observed in the Atlantic basin on record, based on the 1-5 Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale of sustained winds of at least 157 miles per hour (mph). Atlantic Hurricane season is said to be most active between mid-August and mid-October.

Beryl’s early recorded date and speed prove notable

It’s the earliest recorded date and the speed with which Hurricane Beryl intensified that makes it so notable.

Climate science suggests that global warming contributed to Beryl’s compelling strength, as hurricanes intensify from the energy gained from a sea surface temperature of at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 Celsius). A warming sea temperature, normally not reached until later in the summer, is what enabled Hurricane Beryl’s early sustained (Category 5) wind speeds of 165 mph.

In the hours preceding projected landfall I saw our resort operators, as well as shop owners around Tulum, preparing their structures for impact.

Luckily, Beryl was ultimately downgraded to Category 2 with sustained winds of 110 mph by the time it reached the Yucatán Peninsula. Just shy of a Cat 3 storm, which has sustained winds between 111 and 129 mph, Hurricane Beryl largely felled trees and caused some minor flooding and power outages in some areas, but no reported injuries or deaths.

Things turned out better than expected

I met Gerardo Melendez at the Psylo clothing store on Avenida Tulum, the town’s main shopping street lined with restaurants, bars, handicraft shops and more. “We boarded up the windows and sealed the roof with waterproof paint” he said, “and in the end it wasn’t so strong and only for three hours, so everything was okay.”

Both locals and tourists were grateful that relatively only minor damage occurred and that power was restored and most things were already being cleaned up and starting to return to normal within a day or two.

The Bahia Principe Akumal resort where my family stayed, was also in the direct path of the hurricane. Vacationers from around the world, including many from the U.S., were made safe by staff who took precautionary measures such as moving guests overnight to safer quarters off the beach front, shielding guest rooms with affixed metal storm screens in front of sliding glass doors, boarding and taping the large window panes of common spaces, lashing poolside chairs together and even securing alcohol (maybe to the dismay of all-inclusive payers) per government order for fire and general safety.

Mark Brightwell, a landscape architect from Las Vegas, Nevada, was staying on the same property at the time of the hurricane. We stopped to chat while walking around to check out the aftermath. He told me he thought he was trading 117 degree heat at home for a Riviera Maya vacation with his family. They also found themselves directly in the path of Hurricane Beryl. “It was no beryl of fun,” he quipped, “but it turned out to be an amazing experience! We ended up staying because it was downgraded to a Cat 2 storm, the flights at Cancun airport were cancelled anyway and it was evident that resort staff were working hard to ensure our safety.”

The following statement was one of the official warnings to resort guests, “During the hurricane, noise produced by rain and wind is heard, followed by a period of complete calm. Remember not to leave the room or open doors or windows. It is the centre of the hurricane, the phenomenon has not ended yet, afterwards there will be rain and wind again.”

Having already evacuated for six hurricanes while living on the Gulf of Mexico in Texas and Louisiana, Brightwell also told me that he ventured out of his room for just a few minutes when the eye of the hurricane passed through. “The shift from an hour of very intense wind and rain to complete calm is an amazing sense,” he said. “The rain and wind stopped for about half an hour, so I walked outside briefly and took a photo of the grounds outside my building. Some palm trees were totally uprooted and others had windsnap where they broke across the trunk. Then I went back to our room for the second half!”

All said, Hurricane Beryl left a trail of destruction in Barbados, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula before moving through the Gulf of Mexico to Texas.

At the time this story was submitted, Hurricane Beryl had moved across the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall on July 8 as a Category 1 storm, starting on the Texas Gulf Coast at Matagorda, just west of Houston, and continuing as a tropical depression toward the central U.S.