"It's hard to communicate how unbelievable this is." //

Officially, of course, the Atlantic hurricane season begins on June 1, But most years, the tropics remain fairly sleepy for the first month or two, allowing coastal residents to ease into the season.

Yes, a tropical storm might form here or a modest hurricane there. But the really big and powerful hurricanes, which develop from tropical waves in the central Atlantic and roar into the Caribbean Sea, do not spin up until August or September when seas reach their peak temperatures.

Not so this year, in which the Atlantic Ocean is boiling already. The seas in the main development region of the Atlantic have already reached temperatures not normally seen until August or September. This has led to the rapid intensification of Hurricane Beryl, which crashed through the Windward Islands on Monday and is now traversing the Caribbean Sea toward Jamaica.

Beryl is, to put it mildly, a freak storm.

It intensified on Monday night into a Category 5 hurricane, with sustained winds of 165 mph. Like other meteorologists, I had to check my calendar to verify that it really just was the first day of July. Remember, we're still in the traditionally "sleepy" part of hurricane season. Prior to Beryl, in more than a century of hurricane records, the earliest a Category 5 hurricane has ever developed in the Atlantic was July 16. That was Hurricane Emily, in 2005, the notorious hurricane season that delivered Katrina to New Orleans about a month later. //

For this year, forecasters have been consistently predicting a hyperactive season due to the combination of roasting sea surface temperatures and the onset of La Niña during the critical months of August, September, and October. That forecast seems to be right on track and will be of concern to all coastal residents in the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean islands. If Beryl is smashing records from 2005 and 1933 already, we're in "this is fine" territory.