Hurricane Melissa category, path, landfall: Check Day-wise weather forecast
“Conditions (in Jamaica) will decline rapidly today,” Jamie Rhome, the center’s deputy director, said Sunday. “Be prepared to ride this for several days.”
Melissa was located about 110 miles (180 kilometers) south-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica, and about 285 miles (460 kilometers) south-southwest of Guantanamo, Cuba, on Sunday morning. The hurricane center said maximum sustained winds were 140 mph (220 km/h) and moving west at 5 mph (7 km/h).
Melissa was expected to drop torrential rains of up to 30 inches (760 millimeters) over Jamaica and southern Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), according to the hurricane center. Some areas could see as much as 40 inches (1,010 millimeters) of rain.
He also warned that major damage to infrastructure, power and communications outages, and isolation of communities in Jamaica could be expected.
Melissa will be near or over Cuba late Tuesday and could bring up to 300 millimeters of rain before moving toward the Bahamas later Wednesday. The hurricane watch for Cuba may be upgraded to a warning later Sunday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Sunday. The erratic and slow-moving storm killed at least three people in Haiti and a fourth person in the Dominican Republic, where another person was missing.
The Jamaican government said Sangster International Airport, the main airport in Montego Bay, would close at noon local time on Sunday as the island’s national emergency agency activated its level 3 emergency protocol ahead of Melissa.
Norman Manley International Airport in the capital Kingston, the island’s largest airport, closed at 21:00 on Saturday.
“The slow motion of this system doesn’t allow you to recover. It’s going to sit there, shedding water while it’s barely moving, and that’s a significant challenge that we need to be aware of,” warned Evan Thompson, chief director of the Jamaica Meteorological Service.
“There is no escape from the wrath of this hurricane,” said Richard Thompson, acting director of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management.
He said all members of the National Response Team are currently on full alert.
More than 650 shelters are operational in Jamaica. Warehouses across the island are well stocked and thousands of food packages have been pre-positioned for rapid distribution if needed, officials said.
Haitian officials said three people died due to the hurricane and five people were injured due to the collapse of the wall. There were also reports of rising river levels in Sainte-Suzanne in the northeast, flooding and the collapse of a bridge due to breaches in the riverbanks.
Haitian officials said many residents were still reluctant to leave their homes.
The storm damaged nearly 200 homes in the Dominican Republic and disabled water supply systems, affecting more than half a million customers. It also caused downed trees and traffic lights, caused several minor landslides, and left more than two dozen communities isolated by floodwaters.
The Bahamas Bureau of Meteorology said Melissa could bring tropical storm or hurricane conditions to the southeastern and central Bahamas and islands in the Turks and Caicos by early next week.
