On Saturday, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season developed into a Category 1.

The hurricane, named Beryl, has sustained winds of approximately 75 mph as of Saturday afternoon, having grown from 60 mph on Friday when it was still a tropical storm. Beryl is expected to continue to strengthen as it travels west across the eastern Caribbean, potentially experiencing “rapid intensification.”

According to Eddie Walker, AccuWeather’s Senior Storm Warning Meteorologist, “Steering breezes will guide the system to cross the Windward Islands of the eastern Caribbean from Sunday night to Monday, then waters near Jamaica during the middle of next week and perhaps to the shores of Central America or southeastern Mexico at the end of next week.”

Another AccuWeather meteorologist noted that storms in this longitude and latitude are uncommon for this time of year, with only “seven named storms” forming “over the last 173 years” prior to Independence Day.

Beryl intensified into a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean, and the US National Hurricane Center said it may undergo rapid strengthening https://t.co/N9wbGDa00M pic.twitter.com/4T6DYfX4fm

— Reuters (@Reuters) June 30, 2024

Fox Weather reported that the first hurricane in the Atlantic basin doesn’t typically arrive until around August 11 on average, so Beryl is ahead of the game, which is likely due in part to the unseasonably high ocean temperatures.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted that 2024 will see an above average hurricane season, with 8 to 13 hurricanes, and 4 to 7 being classified as “major.”

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NOAA blames the likely above average season on the El Niño/La Niña pattern, as well as ocean temperatures, which “in May were closer to what we would expect in late August, when we are approaching the traditional peak of the hurricane season.”

When the 2023 hurricane season came to a close last year, it ranked as the 4th most active in the last 73 years of tracking, though only Hurricane Idalia made U.S. landfall as a category 3 in northwest Florida.

Former President Donald Trump told voters in Virginia that the real question they should have after the presidential debate is whether the country can survive four more years of President Joe Biden.

Trump made the comments at a rally in Virginia on Friday, just one day after CNN hosted a presidential debate in Atlanta where Biden frequently appeared lost and confused. During the rally at Historic Greenbrier Farms in Chesapeake, Trump appeared with Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin and spoke to thousands of Virginia voters.

“The question every voter should be asking themselves today is not whether Joe Biden can survive a 90-minute debate performance, but whether America can survive four more years of crooked Joe Biden in the White House,” Trump said, according to Fox News.

Biden, who easily bested Trump in Virginia in 2020, now only holds about a two-point lead in the state, according to an average of polls.

“Our case to Virginia is very simple,” Trump added during the rally. “We will seal the border, we will make the American Dream affordable again, but we will bring back the American Dream, something you don’t hear about anymore. … Under my leadership, we had the greatest economy in the history of the world … during my term, we had gasoline down to $1.87 a gallon.”

Around 10,000 reportedly attended the rally where Trump spoke for about 90 minutes.

Trump also said that a bigger problem for the country was Biden’s policies, not just his personal health.

“Remember, the biggest problem for our country is not Joe Biden’s personal decline,” he said. “It’s that Joe Biden’s policies are causing America’s decline at a level that we’ve never seen before.”

Youngkin, who won an upset bid for governor in 2021, promised to help get Trump into the White House at the rally.

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“Mr. President, this is the best Trump rally that you have ever had and you are doing it in Virginia, and yes, on behalf of 8.7 million Virginians, Mr. President, we are going to go to work and get you back in the White House,” he said.

Biden was widely criticized in the media and by Democratic strategists for his shaky performance during Thursday’s night debate, prompting some to question whether Democrats would try to swap him out. Throughout the debate, Trump repeatedly attacked Biden over the record number of illegal immigrants who have entered the country under his watch while Biden criticized Trump for his handling of the economy and ongoing legal problems.