Hurricane Beryl strengthened back into a Category 3 storm late on Thursday as it headed towards Mexico’s resort-studded Yucatan Peninsula.
It left a trail of destruction across the eastern Caribbean and at least nine people dead.
The US National Hurricane Centre said Beryl, which was the earliest Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic, had winds of 115mph after weakening earlier in the day into a Category 2 storm.
Jack Beven, senior hurricane specialist at the US Hurricane Centre, said “the biggest immediate threat now that the storm is moving away from the Cayman Islands is landfall in the Yucatan Peninsula”.
Beryl was expected to bring heavy rain and winds to Mexico’s Caribbean coast, before crossing the Yucatan peninsula and restrengthening in the Gulf of Mexico to make a second strike on northeast Mexico.
As the wind began gusting over Tulum’s white sand beaches on Thursday afternoon, four-wheelers with megaphones rolled along the sand telling people to leave.
Tourists snapped photos of the growing surf, but military personnel urged them to leave as Beryl headed to an expected landfall around Tulum early on Friday.
Beryl damaged or destroyed 95% of homes on a pair of islands in St Vincent and the Grenadines, jumbled fishing boats in Barbados and ripped off roofs in Jamaica before rumbling past the Cayman Islands early on Thursday.
Mexico’s popular Caribbean coast prepared shelters, evacuated some small outlying coastal communities and even moved sea turtle eggs off beaches threatened by storm surge.
In Playa del Carmen, most businesses were closed on Thursday and some were boarding up windows.
The head of Mexico’s civil defence agency, Laura Velazquez, said Beryl is expected to be a Category 1 hurricane when it hits a relatively unpopulated stretch around Tulum early on Friday.
But once Beryl re-emerges into the Gulf of Mexico a day later, she said, it is again expected to build to hurricane strength and could hit right around the Mexico-US border, at Matamoros. That area was already soaked in June by Tropical Storm Alberto.
Ms Velazquez said temporary storm shelters were in place at schools and hotels but efforts to evacuate a few highly exposed villages — like Punta Allen, which sits on a narrow spit of land south of Tulum, and Mahahual further south — had been only partially successful.
Beryl’s eye wall brushed by Jamaica’s southern coast on Wednesday afternoon while on Thursday morning, telephone poles and trees were blocking the roadways in Kingston.
Authorities confirmed a young man died on Wednesday after he was swept into a storm water drain while trying to retrieve a ball. A woman also died after a house collapsed on her.
Residents took advantage of a break in the rain to begin clearing debris.
Sixty percent of the island remained without electricity, along with a lack of water and limited telecommunications.
Government officials were assessing the damage, but it was hampered by the lack of communication, mainly in southern parishes that suffered the most damage.
The premier of the Cayman Islands, Juliana O’Connor, thanked residents and visitors on Thursday for contributing to the “collective calm” ahead of Beryl by following storm protocols.
Michelle Forbes, the St Vincent and Grenadines director of the National Emergency Management Organisation, said that about 95% of homes in Mayreau and Union Island have been damaged by Hurricane Beryl.
Three people were reported killed in Grenada and Carriacou and another in St Vincent and the Grenadines, officials said. Three other deaths were reported in northern Venezuela, where four people were missing, officials said.
One fatality in Grenada occurred after a tree fell on a house, said Kerryne James, the environment minister.
St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves has promised to rebuild the archipelago.
The US National Hurricane Centre said on Thursday that Tropical Storm Aletta had formed in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico’s coast.
Aletta, which was located about 190 miles from Manzanillo and had maximum sustained winds of 40mph, was forecast to head away from land and dissipate by the weekend.
