Storm passes northwest of the island with squalls and outages affecting hundreds of homes
Hurricane Erin brushed past Bermuda overnight, delivering thunderstorms, squalls and leaving pockets of the island without power.
The large Category 2 system passed about 323 nautical miles to the island’s northwest at 7 pm.
Michelle Pitcher, former Director at the Bermuda Weather Service, said the island briefly experienced tropical storm-force winds.
Preliminary figures from the BWS, shared with Bermuda Broadcasting, show that the strongest wind gust recorded at the airport was about 34 knots sustained, with gusts up to 50 knots. Meanwhile, at the National Museum in Dockyard, sustained winds reached 41 knots, with gusts up to 51 knots.
Shortly after midnight, around 1,300 homes were without power, mainly in St. George’s and Warwick. There was also an outage earlier in the evening in Pembroke, where utility equipment came down in the Happy Valley area. Another large outage in the White Sands area of Paget was attributed to lightning strikes, according to BELCO.
As of 8 am, the number of homes without power had fallen to 295.
In a post to social media, the utility company said crews had begun restoring power “as quickly and safely as possible,” adding: “Please exercise extreme caution when driving, walking or riding near our working crews. The safety of you, our crew, the public and all road users is paramount.”
Ms Pitcher explained: “Erin was a quite large hurricane, so we already started to see clouds from around it Wednesday morning and then Wednesday and Thursday and even early this morning, all of the heavier showers and isolated thunderstorms that have been moving through our area are associated with rain bands from Erin.”
She added that conditions are expected to settle quickly today but urged residents to keep a watchful eye on the tropics.
“There is a development area that the National Hurricane Centre is watching to our south so it has an 80% chance of developing into a tropical depression so we expect to see that after today or tomorrow.”
Listen to Ms Pitcher’s morning update, in full, below:
