Hurricane Melissa bears down on Jamaica as a Category 5 storm

(Bloomberg) --Hurricane Melissa is churning toward Jamaica as the island's worst-ever storm, with high winds and flooding rains already pummeling coastal areas in the hours before landfall.

Melissa's top winds reached 180 miles (290 kilometers) per hour, making it a Category 5 storm, the highest level on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. The dangerous storm was about 50 miles south-southeast of Negril, Jamaica, at the western tip of the island, the US National Hurricane Center said in an 9 a.m. New York time update.

Melissa, while picking up some speed, is still ambling along at about 7 miles per hour. Commercial-forecaster AccuWeather Inc. estimates will come ashore to the east in Black River early this afternoon.

"Remain sheltered!" Brad Reinhart, a senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, wrote early Tuesday. "Catastrophic flash flooding, landslides, and destructive winds will continue through today, causing widespread infrastructure damage, power and communication outages."

Buildings where Melissa comes ashore may be completely destroyed, according to the hurricane center.

"Much of that area is going to be flattened, sadly," said Tyler Roys, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.

Melissa moved slower and farther west as it skirted Jamaica before turning northeast, which means it will make landfall later than forecasters had initially predicted. The storm picked up speed slightly on Tuesday morning, however, as larger weather patterns allowed it to turn.

The hurricane is forecast to dump as much as 40 inches (102 centimeters) of rain across parts of Jamaica, and Melissa also threatens to push a wall of water of up to 13 feet into the coastline where it comes ashore. About half of all hurricane deaths come from drowning.

If it maintains its strength, Melissa would be the first confirmed Category 5 storm to hit Jamaica.

"It's making a turn to beeline toward the western part of Jamaica," Evan Thompson, principal director at the country's national meteorological service, said at a media briefing on Monday evening. A break in a high-pressure system that had earlier kept Melissa tracking west, parallel to the nation's shoreline, is allowing the hurricane to turn sharply north, he added.

Jamaica's information minister, Dana Morris Dixon, invoked the colors of the national flag — black for hardship, green for nature, and gold for sunshine — at the briefing. "We are a people that are resilient," she said.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in a video statement posted on Monday that residents in low-lying and flood-prone areas should be prepared to flee given the high risk of "complete displacement and loss of life."

The storm's outer bands have already knocked out power to about 50,000 people, mostly in western Jamaica, said Desmond McKenzie, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development. 

Jamaica is best known for its beaches and resorts, but the island also is home to towering mountain ranges with peaks as high as 7,400 feet. That topography likely will amplify Melissa's rains, said Andra Garner, a climate scientist at Rowan University.

"It's also easy to overlook that these winds are likely to be more powerful the farther up you go from sea level," Garner said.

Melissa has already led to at least seven deaths across the Caribbean, including three in Haiti. The storm is endangering roughly 3.5 million people across the region, according to estimates from the United Nations' and European Union's Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System. 

A hurricane warning has been issued for the southeastern and central Bahamas and four provinces in Cuba, where the storm is forecast to hit after devastating Jamaica. The US Navy pulled non-essential personnel out of its base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel told his cabinet on Monday to "spare no expense" when it comes to making preparations ahead of Melissa's landfall, despite an ongoing economic crisis that has resulted in shortages of food, medicine and basic goods.

Melissa's compact size and western landfall in Jamaica means losses will likely fall short of early estimates that went as high as $16 billion, said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research. He now estimates losses will reach $6.5 billion, comparable to the impact of Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. 

Jamaica's ports have been closed to shipping, according to the national port authority, and the state broadcaster reported the island's international airports both halted operations over the weekend. Officials have ordered evacuations in more than a half dozen towns and cities, including Port Royal at the entrance to Kingston Harbor, which dates back to the 17th century. 

The town sits on a low-lying spit just west of one of the island's largest airports. The country's airport authority has said Norman Manley International is particularly vulnerable to storm surge and coastal erosion from rising seas.

The storm threatens Jamaican coffee farms that had already faced significant losses last year after Hurricane Beryl may have destroyed up to 10% of the country's production. 

While the data is spotty in places, there is no record of a storm this strong ever hitting Jamaica since 1851, said Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University. Before Melissa, the most powerful storm to hit the island was Gilbert in 1988, as a Category 4 with winds of about 132 miles per hour. 

In the Atlantic this year, Hurricanes Erin and Humberto also reached Category 5, though neither threatened land. Gabrielle hit Category 4, which means four storms have become major hurricanes across the Atlantic in 2025, compared with an average of three by the end of October. 

Klotzbach said in an X post that the only other year more than two Category 5 hurricanes formed in the Atlantic was 2005, which produced four — including Katrina, which devastated New Orleans.