Hurricane Beryl to pass Jamaica as Granite City couple stuck at resort

JAMAICA – Hurricane Beryl continues to churn westward and is now slowly weakening after becoming the earliest ever Category 5 hurricane in Atlantic Basin recorded history!

The hurricane winds peaked early Tuesday at 165 mph after passing the Windward Islands late Monday. There are few, if any, views of a hurricane more impressive than from inside the eye of the hurricane.

Video from the Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters shows the classic stadium-effect of the eye wall. That massive wall of clouds that surrounds the clear and calm eye in the center. It is within the eye wall that those 165mph winds were reported.

Down below, Hurricane Beryl has only had one brief encounter with land so far. It passed close enough to both Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago to stir up the seas and drop some locally heavy rain, but conditions were not much worse than a bad summer thunderstorm.

The same will not be true for Jamaica Wednesday, as the core of the hurricane is forecast to clip the southern side of the island. The hurricane is forecast to be Category 3 when it passes Jamaica, but that still brings dangerous winds of 120 mph and a big-time storm surge.

FOX 2 talked with Dakota and Mary Mikuleza, a couple from Granite City who are trapped in Jamaica on their honeymoon. They’ve tried to get a flight out on any airline to anywhere else, but with no luck. They now have to ride out the hurricane in the ballroom of their Negril resoresort,h no idea when they may be able to get home.

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