Bermuda braces for direct hit from Hurricane Ernesto

Hurricane Ernesto churned towards Bermuda yesterday as a powerful Category 2 storm likely to produce 1’ (30cm) of rainfall over the weekend and trigger life-threatening flooding and storm surges in the British island territory.
Ernesto, centred about 180 miles (290km) southwest of the archipelago at 2pm Atlantic time (1pm ET/1700 GMT), was packing sustained winds of up to 100mph (160kph) and had the potential to drop up to 15” (38cm) of rain.
It is likely to make landfall this morning, the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said, making conditions ripe for storm surges and flash flooding by the afternoon.
Bermudians were hauling boats out of the ocean and water, boarding up windows, filling bathtubs with water and stocking up on batteries and food supplies.
As the territory’s emergency officials met on Thursday, Minister of National Security Michael Weeks urged residents to complete their hurricane preparation as soon as possible.
“Time is running out,” he said, according to the Royal Gazette newspaper.
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.
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.
Ernesto was crawling at roughly 14mph (22kph) on a north-northeast trek, the NHC said, gradually weakening and slowing by today before picking up speed and potentially regaining strength later tomorrow.
Bermuda, a collection of 181 small islands clustered more than 600 miles (965km) off the Carolina coast, can expect hurricane conditions to persist until tomorrow, NHC Director Michael Brennan said in an online briefing.
Fewer than a dozen hurricanes have made direct landfall on Bermuda, according to records dating back 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 1.5mn customers.
About 250,000 homes and businesses remained without power as of morning yesterday, 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.
Since Hurricane Irma seven years ago, Puerto Rico’s grid has been in a rebuilding process, and residents have increased their use of renewable power, according to a study by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Despite work to shore up the grid, and $1bn in federal funding, the island’s power organisations have failed to balance budgets or stabilise the central power network, said Tom Sanzillo, the institute’s director of finance.
“The grid in Puerto Rico remains in a state of disrepair,” he said.
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 2’ of rain.