Cyclone Melissa was upgraded today to the maximum category 5 in the Caribbean, threatening Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic with devastating winds and floods in the next 48 hours.
“Melissa is now a category 5 cyclone,” the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported today on its website, with severe winds, heavy rains and devastating flood phenomena expected to progressively intensify in Jamaica during the day and towards the night. Melissa was located approximately 505 kilometers south-southwest of Guantanamo, Cuba, according to the NHC, which is based in Miami.
The center of the cyclone “is expected to pass near or over Jamaica tonight and tomorrow, Tuesday, cross southeastern Cuba tomorrow night and head towards the southeastern Bahamas on Wednesday,” the NHC estimated.
Melissa has already caused the death of four people: three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic, where a teenager is also missing.
The NHC spoke of winds with speeds of up to 260 km/h and “large and devastating” waves. The relatively low speed at which the cyclone is moving, about 6 km/h, worries experts, because there is a risk that the rains and landslides it causes will last longer.
“Destructive flash floods and numerous landslides are possible,” according to the NHC.
Residents in the affected areas “must remain in their homes for up to two or three days, perhaps longer for populations that will be isolated by the devastating floods,” NHC Director Jamie Rhome has already emphasized in a recorded message. He warned that conditions in Jamaica would deteriorate “very, very quickly in the coming hours.”
Melissa was the 13th tropical storm of the season for these types of phenomena (early June – late November) in the Atlantic.
The previous strong cyclone that had hit Jamaica was Beryl, in early July 2024.
APE-MPE
