Newlyweds Document Their Honeymoon In the Middle of Hurricane Beryl

It's unlikely that the newly married Alex and Emma Steinke thought the "or for worse" part of their vows would come into play so quickly after saying "I do," but that's exactly the situation they found themselves in when they happened to arrive on the island of Grenada just as a record breaking hurricane was about to make landfall.

The couple documented their Caribbean honeymoon just as Hurricane Beryl hit as a Category 4 storm on July 1, 2024. They chronicled their experience for their followers on TikTok, creating a one-of-a-kind honeymoon story that they will probably be telling their kids and their grandkids about some day. Read all about the Steinkes and their unusual first days together as husband and wife below.

Hurricane Beryl makes history as the first hurricane to reach Category 5 status this early in the season.

Storm chasers have been in a state of shock since July 1st, when Beryl's winds reached a sustained speed of 160 miles per hour, officially bumping it up into the all-powerful Cat 5 status. According to USA Today , the storm broke previous records by better than two weeks with its July 1 timing. Prior to that, the earliest a storm has ever garnered enough strength to reach Category 5 status was on July 17, 2005 with Hurricane Emily .

Hurricane Emily seemed to set the precedence during the 2005 hurricane season, which also brought us Hurricane Katrina , a storm that cost over 100 billion dollars in damage and took the lives of more than 1,300 people, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

Hurricane Beryl may have dropped down to a Category 4 storm when it hit Grenada, but there's no telling what it will do as it moves across the Caribbean Sea Tuesday, where it will encounter warmer than normal ocean temperatures, something USA Today notes led to its unprecedented intensification. As you may already know, warmer ocean temperatures have been linked back to man-made climate change, something that is been known to create more intense storm systems.

A Midwest couple rode out the storm during their honeymoon.

While it's too soon to tell what impact, if any, this storm will have on the U.S. at large, we do know of at least two Americans who have already felt Beryl's wrath. The Steinkes shared updates about their experience with their followers, showing them the good, the bad, and the ugly of having to hunker down for the storm with little resources and no friends or family for hundreds of miles.

In one update, Steinke gave followers a tour of her room so she could show them where they would be hunkering down if things got too hairy.

At one point Steinke went to the window and showed her curious followers what her view was as the storm approached. It was terrifying to not only see how much the trees were whipping around in the wind, but also to see how close their room was to the ocean. With unknown swells expected, Steinke was right in the path of potentially dangerous storm surges.

At 4:30 local time, Steinke says she and her husband got the all-clear, and they were able to resume their honeymoon with drinks and a show.

In an interview with People magazine, Steinke explained that while she was disappointed that she didn't get the true island honeymoon experience, she was just thankful that the storm wasn't as devastating as it could've been. Thankfully, the new Mr. and Mrs. seemed to take this little hiccup in stride, something that will hopefully bode well for any stormy weather (both figuratively and literally) the pair encounters in the future!