Nearly five years to the day that Category 4 Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, Category 1 Hurricane Fiona consumed the U.S. island territory with catastrophic flooding, with rainfall surpassing over two feet and flash flood warnings at times enveloping practically all municipalities, while plunging the entire island into intermittent darkness.
Engorged streams turned into raging rivers that tore bridges from their abutments and dangerous and destructive mudslides and rockslides piled into mountain homes.
According to the National Weather Service, as of Monday morning upwards of 27 inches of rain has fallen over the past several days in association with Fiona, with a widespread swath of 15 to 20 inches along the south-central and southeastern portions of the island from Ponce along the southern coast to Caguas and Juncos in the east-central mountains.
Another 4 to 8 inches is possible Monday with trailing feeder bands to the east of Fiona’s center.
Fiona’s center came ashore along the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico on Sunday at 3:20 PM AST (ET) with maximum sustained surface winds of 85 mph.
Winds gusted as high as 103 mph at the Ponce Yacht and Fishing Club (El Club Náutico de Ponce) on the coast at Isla de Gata south of Ponce shortly before 2 PM AST Sunday.
About 20 miles east-northeast of where Fiona came ashore, winds gusted to 113 mph inland at higher elevations at Yauco in southwestern Puerto Rico.
Sunday night, Fiona jogged westward as it strengthened to a 90 mph hurricane before making a second landfall about 20 miles south-southwest of Punta Cana before daybreak Monday morning in the Dominican Republic.
The eastern portion of the Dominican Republic will feel the worst of Fiona’s winds Monday as the center reemerges back over water in the coming hours.
Fiona is forecast to strengthen further and impact the Turks and Caicos by Tuesday as a Category 2 hurricane. Preparations there should be rushed to completion.
The storm will get pulled northward and away from the mainland U.S. this week.
Once again, Bermuda finds itself in the cone of a strengthening hurricane for later this week for what’s forecast to become the first Category 3 hurricane of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season.
Elsewhere in the Atlantic, things will be mostly quiet this week. Models suggest we may need to monitor a tropical wave that’ll be entering the eastern Caribbean toward the end of the week, but environmental conditions likely won’t become more conducive for development until the weekend.