Hurricane Melissa Strengthens To Category 5 As It Approaches Jamaica 

Officials have warned Jamaican locals to seek shelter as Hurricane Melissa strengthens to a Category 5 storm before it’s projected to make landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday. 

According to NBC News, Hurricane Melissa was approximately 135 miles southwest of Kingston, the capital of Jamaica, earlier this morning. Tracking by the U.S. National Hurricane Center has shown the storm is sustaining winds of 160 miles per hour and is moving west at a rate of three miles per hour. At a Category 5, it’s the highest and most dangerous rating on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale and is projected to increase in intensity. 

Hurricane Melissa is expected to pour anywhere between 15 and 40 inches of rain onto Jamaica. Flash flooding, extensive property damage, and extreme winds are all to be expected when Melissa makes landfall. Mandatory evacuation orders were sent out on Sunday evening, with Jamaican officials imploring Jamaican residents to go to the designated storm shelters or seek higher ground. 

Desmond Mackenzie, Jamaica’s minister of local government and community development, said many Jamaican communities “will not survive this flooding” during a news conference on Monday. Mackenzie said that there are currently 218 people staying in some of the country’s 881 storm shelters. As of Monday morning, the shelters were still open and were not yet full.

The last time Jamaica was hit with a storm of a similar magnitude was Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. That storm was a Category 4, with winds of up to 135 miles per hour. According to the New York Times, Gilbert displaced 500,000 people and killed 45. 

Officials in Jamaica are warning residents about the hazards and disruptions to be expected in the coming days. “We’ve started every press conference where I’ve had the opportunity to speak by simply saying that it is not time to panic, but time to prepare. The time for preparation is all but over. The time now is to listen to instructions,” Matthew Samuda, Jamaica’s Minister of Water, Environment and Climate Change, said at a news conference, according to CNN. “Heed the warnings. This is serious. It’s a devastating storm.”

“You will start to see disruption to water systems, we imagine, later this evening going into early morning tomorrow,” he added. “Now is definitely the time to put aside your water for storage and to use sparingly. Every drop will count.”

Samuda said that while the country’s infrastructure has significantly improved since Gilbert, Hurricane Melissa’s potential impact is something you can’t reasonably prepare for. “We’re certainly better prepared than we would have been in the ’80s, but when you speak about 160 mph winds, we’ve never tested our new infrastructure in that regard,” Samuda told CNN.

“There isn’t infrastructure that’s built, I think, anywhere in the world to navigate that sort of risk,” added Samuda. “We do expect that if it does come onshore, we will be facing significant damage.”

While Jamaica is expected to take the brunt of the impact when Hurricane Melissa makes landfall, the U.S. National Hurricane Center projects the storm to impact Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba, with a hurricane watch active for the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

“Although interaction with Jamaica will lead to some weakening, Melissa is expected to reach southeastern Cuba as a major hurricane, and will also move across the southeastern Bahamas and be near Bermuda as a hurricane,” the hurricane center said of its latest forecast. 

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