'It could have been so much worse': Former Fredericton woman provides insight to Hurricane Beryl on Cayman Islands

Strong winds and heavy rain continued outside Amy Kilfillen’s door Thursday morning – a clear sign of Hurricane Beryl, a system she’s been watching for the last week.

“[Wednesday] only essential workers were working, but the supermarkets and stuff, gas stations were still open so people could still get some things, but we all had to be in by 6 p.m.,” said Kilfillen.

Hurricane Beryl was downgraded to a Category 3 storm just before it passed-by the Cayman Islands where the former Maritimer now calls home.

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However, effects from the storm were still seen on the islands.

“Three o’clock in the morning I could hear the winds starting and kind of was in and out of sleep until about 7:30 and just hearing the gusts and it’s pretty much stayed that way,” she said.

“There’s definitely some areas where the sea did come up over the road. There’s some areas where trees have come down and stuff like that. Most of the island is out of power and I’m not sure the reason behind that. Luckily I didn’t lose power.”

According to the National Hurricane Center in the United States, the centre of Hurricane Beryl was moving away from the Cayman Islands Thursday morning and is now expected to arrive at the Yucatan Coast of Mexico by Friday.

Chris Fogarty with the Hurricane Centre in Dartmouth, N.S., says “this is basically the atmosphere’s response to an excessively warm ocean.”

"Right now it's under going some structural changes, so the intensity, the categorical intensity is coming down a bit, but the longer these storms exist, they tend to broaden with age," he said.

"It's been around a few days so it's getting wider, so the area of hurricane winds is quite wide still."

Back in the Cayman Islands, Kilfillen says both Cayman Brac and Little Cayman were given the all clear before noon on Thursday, but there was still a few hours worth of weather expected.

“I’m still a little nervous because Jamaica, a lot of damage they got was still after the storm had started to pass,” she said.

“We didn’t get as much rain as predicted, but maybe it will still come. I’m not sure. We are flat, so we don’t handle a lot of rain and flooding is a big issue here.”

As Hurricane Beryl continues to roar across the Caribbean towards the Gulf of Mexico, leaving damage and clean up in its path, Kilfillen is left feeling relieved that this storm didn’t hit as hard as it could have.

“We’re very, very grateful,” she said. “It could have been so much worse.”