The alert had already turned red on Friday, while Tammy was still far away. Guadeloupe will go into “purple” cyclone alert, with the hurricane expected to pass “as close as possible to or over the Guadeloupean archipelago on Saturday during the day”, according to Météo-France. The island has been at a standstill since Friday evening, all weekend cultural events are canceled, planes grounded, maritime connections suspended.
Yesterday, the prefect Xavier Lefort communicated the list of safe shelters, encouraging the population of the archipelago to join “a shelter” and to “respect all the recommendations of the authorities”. The trajectory of category 1 hurricane Tammy leads this cyclonic phenomenon “to pass in the immediate vicinity of the island of Désirade”, to the east of Grande-Terre, “from 11 a.m.” (5 p.m. in Paris ), specifies the prefect of Guadeloupe in a press release.
“In view of the deterioration of the weather situation in the next few hours, the regional prefect has decided to switch to violet cyclone alert” from 9:30 a.m. (3:30 p.m. in Paris), the same source adds. This level of vigilance, the highest on the scale, “targets phenomena having an extremely significant impact with imminent and certain danger”, recalls the press release. Under these conditions, “the prefect asks the population to confine themselves and to respect all the recommendations of the authorities”. According to Météo-France, winds of 130 km/h are expected, as well as heavy rain, with minimum accumulations of 250 mm.