Hurricane Melissa slams Jamaica. It's tied as strongest land-falling Atlantic storm

Category 5 Hurricane Melissa officially made landfall on Jamaica Tuesday morning as the most powerful hurricane to ever strike the island, as well as the third-strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic.

The National Hurricane Center formally declared landfall — when half the eye of a storm is over land — at 1 p.m. in the town of New Hope on the southwestern tip of the island.

With maximum sustained winds of 185 mph and a pressure of 892 mb, Melissa also tied with the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 for the most powerful storm to make landfall in the Atlantic.

“A very dangerous scenario is now starting to play out in the next few hours as the eye of Melissa moves across Jamaica,” NHC Director Michael Brennan said in a video update Tuesday morning. “Catastrophic wind damage expected in the eye wall here. Total building failure.”

By late afternoon, Melissa was still lashing the island with gusts potentially estimated as high as 200 mph near the eye and in the mountains. While there were early reports of widespread flooding and rivers spilling over, it will take many more days to fully assess what is expected to be catastrophic damage — particularly in parishes closest to the powerful eye.

As of 4 p.m., the storm had already started to weaken as it crossed the island, down to 150 mph maximum sustained winds — a Cat 4 as it passed about 10 miles south of Montego Bay, the popular tourist destination.

While the most extreme winds are concentrated about 30 miles from the eye of the storm, the broad and powerful storm will affect the entire island — as well as Haiti some 300 miles away. It’s bringing up to 30 inches of rain to Jamaica, plus 9 to 13 feet of storm surge above dry land to the southeast of the eye.

Colin Bogle, an adviser for charity Mercy Corps based in Portmore, Jamaica, told the Herald he worried this could become “a humanitarian emergency” for the country in its hardest-hit areas.

“Early this morning we heard a loud explosion, and everything went dark. I am sheltering with my grandmother in Portmore amid widespread blackouts. Outside, trees are being violently tossed in the wind, and the noise is relentless. People are anxious and just trying to hold on until the storm passes,” he said.

On the encouraging side, early televised images from the capitol of Kingston — some 70 miles from Melissa’s compact eye and fiercest winds — showed little structural damage. But waters continued to rise in rivers across the entire island, and mud slides and flash floods remained a major threat.

Ahead of the storm’s arrival, Minister of Local Government Desmond McKenzie said that there had been an uptick in Jamaicans going to shelters. However, there were still people on the streets.

“We are seeing an increase over the last couple of hours of persons responding and have gone into the shelters, which is good, but we still have a few that is still out on the road,” he said in a press conference.

Meanwhile, for tourists who were still in Jamaica, hoteliers across the islands were offering distress rates to assist visitors who may need to extend their stay, and shelter spaces had been made available to them in a number of locations including the Montego Bay Convention Center and the James Hunter Conference Centre in Negril.

“The safety and security of our visitors are paramount,” Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett said.

When Melissa finally draws away from Jamaica, it will take a brief beat before smashing into a second landfall on Cuba’s east coast early Wednesday morning. More than 650,000 people have been evacuated from the eastern end of the island nation.

Forecasters said it could strike as a Category 4, bringing up to 25 inches of rain and 7 to 11 feet of storm surge to a nation already struggling with a failing power grid and recovering from previous storms.

After grinding across the eastern end of Cuba, forecasters expect Melissa to gear up for a third landfall in as many days, this time on the central and southeastern Bahamas as a Category 2. It could bring up to 10 inches of rain and 4 to 6 feet of storm surge, enough to cause flash flooding and power outages on the islands.

Melissa could also lash Turks and Caicos with hurricane-strength winds and rain. In response, American Airlines added an extra flight to help people evacuate on Tuesday ahead of Melissa’s arrival

And that might not be the end of Melissa’s destruction. The latest forecast has Bermuda in the cone on Friday, when Melissa could cross near the island as a Category 1 hurricane. For now, it’s too soon to tell if this could be another landfall or just a close call for Bermuda.

Caribbean officials are using these final days and hours to preposition aid and staff to kickstart recovery as soon as the coast is clear.

Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, said thanks to the prepositioning of relief supplies ahead of the hurricane season, the World Food Program is coordinating a sea lift operation from Barbados carrying supplies. UNICEF is also planing to provide 2,000 relief kits once airports reopen and the weather conditions permit flights.

Joint warehouses established earlier this year in Barbados by the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency and the World Food Program, with support from the European Union and Canada, are also proving instrumental in the unfolding disaster, the U.N. said.

In Cuba, where the hurricane is expected to make landfall overnight in the eastern part of the island, preparations of prepositioning of supplies and assets are still underway.

“Authorities plan to evacuate about half a million people to safer ground,” said Dujarric. “And in Haiti, more than 3,600 people are sheltering in emergency sites.”

WFP has also prepositioned more than 800 metric tons of food to assist 86,000 people, the U.N. said.

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