Hurricane Fiona Batters Turks and Caicos as a Category 3 Storm

Hurricane Fiona battered the Turks and Caicos Islands as a Category 3 storm on Tuesday, prompting people in some areas to seek shelter and stock up on food, after it knocked out Puerto Rico’s power grid and drenched parts of the Dominican Republic.

The storm was about 30 miles north-northeast of North Caicos Island on Tuesday afternoon, churning on a path that, after a shift to the north-northwest, will take it to Bermuda by late Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm has had sustained maximum winds of 115 mph, the center said.

By early afternoon on Tuesday, 163 people in Turks and Caicos were in shelters, officials said, and power outages were reported on the islands of Providenciales, Grand Turk, Salt Cay, South Caicos, North Caicos and Middle Caicos. The hurricane center warned of life-threatening flooding, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or fatalities.

Even as Fiona drenched Turks and Caicos, its effects continued to be felt in the Dominican Republic and in Puerto Rico, where most people remained without electricity and running water Tuesday.

The authorities in Puerto Rico said they had restored power to more than 300,000 utility customers, but nearly 1.2 million customers were still without power Tuesday afternoon, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks interruptions. Two-thirds of the island’s water and sewer customers — more than 760,000 — still did not have service because of a lack of power to pumps or turbid water at filtration plants, officials said.

Gov. Pedro R. Pierluisi of Puerto Rico said it would take at least a week for his government to estimate how much damage Fiona had caused. The rain in parts of central, southern and southeastern Puerto Rico had been “catastrophic,” he said at a news conference. “The damages caused by Hurricane Fiona have been devastating for many of our people.”

Flash flooding continued in the eastern portion of the Dominican Republic on Tuesday, the hurricane center said, with an additional 1 to 2 inches of rain expected. The storm was expected to bring 1 to 2 inches of rain to Puerto Rico on Tuesday night, drenching portions of the island that had received up to 35 inches of rain since Sunday.

Fiona strengthened into a Category 3 storm hours before a weather system in the Atlantic Ocean developed into Tropical Storm Gaston on Tuesday afternoon, becoming the seventh named storm of the 2022 hurricane season. That storm was about 1,000 miles west of the Azores in the North Atlantic and posed no immediate threat to land.

Fiona was blamed for at least one fatality in Puerto Rico, where a man died while trying to operate a generator, government officials said. The man’s wife was severely burned, but survived, the officials said. Another death was attributed to the storm in Guadeloupe, which was struck by the storm Saturday. At least two deaths were attributed to the storm in the Dominican Republic, according to the government, and some 13,000 people there had been displaced.

The Dominican Republic’s eastern provinces, home to one of the largest tourism industries in the Caribbean, took the brunt of the storm early Monday. Fiona brought 90 mph winds and heavy rain that set off mudslides, shuttered resorts and damaged highways, officials said.

The government in Turks and Caicos, a British overseas territory, announced a curfew Monday, ordering businesses on several islands to close by 5 p.m., giving residents time to stockpile what they could before the storm bore down on the archipelago.

In supermarkets in Providenciales, the most populous of the Turks and Caicos Islands, a steady stream of shoppers purchased basic supplies, such as potable water, nonperishable items and pet food. By Monday evening, residents had filled sandbags near some stores.

The islands were under a hurricane warning, with 2 to 4 inches of additional rain expected before the storm moves away from the islands late Tuesday or early Wednesday, the hurricane center said.

A tropical storm warning was in effect for the southeastern Bahamas while Bermuda remained under a tropical storm watch. Forecasters did not anticipate that Fiona would threaten the East Coast of the United States, but the hurricane center said that it could generate swells causing life-threatening surf and rip currents there. The Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June through November, had a relatively quiet start, with only three named storms before Sept. 1 and none during August, the first time that has happened since 1997. Storm activity picked up in early September with Danielle and Earl, which formed within a day of each other.

The links between hurricanes and climate change have become clearer with each passing year. Data shows that hurricanes have become stronger worldwide over the past four decades. A warming planet can expect stronger hurricanes over time and a higher incidence of the most powerful storms — though the overall number of storms may drop, because factors like stronger wind shear could keep some weaker storms from forming.

Hurricanes are also becoming wetter because there is more water vapor in the warmer atmosphere; storms such as Hurricane Harvey in 2017 produced far more rain than they would have without human effects on the climate, scientists have suggested. Also, rising sea levels are contributing to higher storm surges, the most destructive elements of tropical cyclones.

In early August, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued an updated forecast for the rest of the season, which still called for an above-normal level of activity.

In it, they predicted the season could include 14 to 20 named storms, with six to 10 turning into hurricanes that could sustain winds of at least 74 mph. Three to five of those could strengthen into what the agency calls major hurricanes — Category 3 or stronger — with winds of at least 111 mph.

Last year, there were 21 named storms, after a record-breaking 30 in 2020. For the past two years, meteorologists have exhausted the list of names used to identify storms during the Atlantic hurricane season, an occurrence that has happened only one other time, in 2005. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.