Bermuda hit with 100 mph winds as Hurricane Imelda passes over

Winds gusting at over 100 mph were hitting Bermuda Wednesday night as the core of Category 2 Hurricane Imelda passed over the territory, bringing the threat of flash flooding and other dangers, officials said.

The center of the storm, which had maximum sustained winds of 100 mph, was moving over Bermuda at 11 p.m. ET, the National Hurricane Center said.

“Please everyone, listen to our meteorologists and stay inside and stay safe,” Michael Weeks, Bermuda’s minister of national security, said in a video at 9:30 p.m. as the storm approached.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or deaths. Around 53 people were in shelters and a wind gust of 105 mph was recorded by around 9 p.m., the government said.

Imelda, which strengthened Wednesday from a Category 1 to a Category 2 storm, was forecast to bring hurricane conditions to Bermuda through early Thursday, as well as between 2 and 4 inches of rain, the hurricane center said.

Imelda was the second of two hurricanes in the Caribbean and Atlantic this week. The other was Hurricane Humberto, which had been a Category 4 storm but which later weakened.

Neither storm directly struck the U.S., but they created powerful surf conditions and rip currents along parts of the East Coast.

On North Carolina’s Outer Banks, six unoccupied homes on the beachfront collapsed, including five over the span of around an hour on Tuesday, officials said. The effects of erosion, surf and rising sea levels have resulted in beachfront homes collapsing in the village of Buxton and elsewhere, Cape Hatteras National Seashore said.

Imelda and Humberto were so close that they impacted each other’s movements, a process called the Fujiwhara effect. It occurs when two storms rotate in the same direction close to each other around a shared midpoint.

No deaths blamed on the dangerous surf appear to have been reported in the U.S. In Cuba, two people died as Imelda passed by the eastern part of the island country, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said Monday.

Humberto was forecast to likely merge with a frontal boundary Wednesday night, the National Hurricane Center said.

Imelda was forecast to to become an "extratropical low" Thursday and weaken, the agency said.

Bermuda is no stranger to major storms. Despite being a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic, it is frequently impacted by tropical cyclones. On record, 14 hurricanes have come within 10 miles of the island, and the most recent to make a direct hit was Hurricane Ernesto last year.