Hurricane Ernesto leaves half of Puerto Rico without power

Ernesto caused significant flooding in Puerto Rico, but now its sights are set on Bermuda.

Transcript

00:00Half of the island's population without power, and that's a big deal here.

00:05The rain continues here. Here's the current view on radar.

00:10And what we're dealing with at this point, for the most part, is this flow from the south.

00:14Now the center of the storm is way off to the northwest, but you're getting this flow from the south.

00:18And as the moisture ascends the south slopes of the mountains, it squeezes the moisture out

00:24as, again, the air ascends up to where it's colder up aloft.

00:28And as the air cools down, climbing the mountains, basically, it reaches a temperature

00:33where there's less capacity to hold much water vapor, so you get more saturation.

00:37And that's the issue here across much of central parts of the area of Puerto Rico.

00:44Also some parts of the eastern section of the Puerto Rico area,

00:48and then eastern sections of the Dominican Republic seeing some occasional rain.

00:52Things are improving, though, into Punta Cana now, where we're seeing less in the way of rain at this point.

00:57The center of the storm is well off to the north.

00:59And we've been dealing with a lot of flooding, a lot of significant flooding,

01:02with many reports of roads closed, reports of bridges overtopped in one or two cases.

01:09In northern Puerto Rico, central parts of the island have seen some very heavy rain.

01:13We've had gusts of wind upwards of, again, up to 68 to 70 miles per hour into places like Culebra.

01:20There's a 2.24-inch rain report, and roads have been impassable at times today.

01:25The latest stats on the storm, Ernesto moving to the northwest.

01:28It's a Category 1 hurricane.

01:30Max sustained winds are around 75 miles per hour, moving northwest at 16 miles per hour,

01:35moving farther from Puerto Rico.

01:37It's going to be drifting northwest, and then the winds off the east coast of the U.S.

01:41are going to kind of buffet this and redirect it away from the eastern U.S.

01:46So that's going to be helpful for those in the east coast, but at the expense of Bermuda.

01:51That's the open road, unfortunately, for Bermuda's case.

01:53This is going to be coming in very close to Bermuda as a Category 2, maybe even a Category 3 hurricane

01:59with winds gusting to 100 to 120 miles per hour on the islands of the Bermuda area.

02:05Overall, 4 to 8 inches of rain are expected there.