\n<\/p>\n
Hurricane Melissa has made landfall in Jamaica, where sheltering residents braced themselves against ferocious winds, heavy flood waters and landslides from the category 5 storm, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes in history.<\/p>\n
The slow-moving colossus is the most intense hurricane to hit Jamaica since records began in 1851 and will linger over the island for hours before turning north-east. As the hurricane came ashore, its winds tore roofs off buildings and left boulders tumbling into roads.<\/p>\n
Jamaica\u2019s government said it had done all it could to prepare, issuing a mandatory evacuation of low-lying areas, as it warned of severe impact for the nation\u2019s 2.8 million people.<\/p>\n
Desmond McKenzie, deputy chair of Jamaica\u2019s disaster risk management council, urged people on Tuesday to seek shelter and stay indoors as the storm crosses the island. \u201cJamaica, this is not the time to be brave,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The streets in the capital, Kingston, remained largely empty on Tuesday, with footage showing trees bent over by the force of wind.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a category 5,\u201d said the prime minister, Andrew Holness. \u201cThe question now is the speed of recovery. That\u2019s the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>A police vehicle drives along a road littered with tree debris from Hurricane Melissa in Kingston, Jamaica, on Tuesday.<\/span> Photograph: Rudolph Brown\/EPA<\/p>\n Category 5 is the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with sustained winds exceeding 157mph (250km\/h). The US National Hurricane Center reported that Melissa carried sustained wind speeds of 185mph (298km\/h), with higher gusts.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a catastrophic situation expected in Jamaica,\u201d the World Meteorological Organization\u2019s tropical cyclone specialist, Anne-Claire Fontan, told a Geneva press briefing. \u201cFor Jamaica, it will be the storm of the century for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n Heavy rain knocked out power for some residents in Portland, St Thomas, St Andrew, St Elizabeth and Westmoreland, including in popular tourist destinations such as Negril and Treasure Beach.<\/p>\n One particularly badly hit area was Manchester parish, which has faced days of torrential rain and violent winds as the storm approached.<\/p>\n One resident, Emma Simms, 37, said she had made a makeshift shelter within a cupboard in her house, where she intended to relocate with her one-year-old and four-year-old.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve tried to make it nice and comfortable. There\u2019s snacks in there, there\u2019s water in there,\u201d she said. \u201cIf things sound like the house isn\u2019t going to hold up, then I\u2019m just going to go in there. We\u2019re going to stick a mattress on top of us and just keep [my children] happy until it passes. Try to make it fun and exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n Simms, a data analyst and transport consultant, moved to Jamaica from the UK six years ago and experienced her first Jamaican hurricane when Beryl devastated the country last summer. \u201cI feel like this is already worse than Beryl already and it hasn\u2019t even landed yet,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve got people to protect, like I need to keep it together. But my belly has been feeling different than it has for the last few days. I can definitely feel the anxiety in me.\u201d<\/p>\n Hurricane Melissa<\/p>\n The chief meteorologist at AccuWeather, Jonathan Porter, said Melissa would be the strongest hurricane in recorded history to hit Jamaica directly.<\/p>\n Landslides were reported before the storm, with officials in Jamaica cautioning that the cleanup and damage assessment would be slow. The storm entered near StElizabeth parish in the south and was expected to exit in the north, forecasters said.<\/p>\n \u201cTotal structural failure is possible near the path of Melissa\u2019s centre,\u201d said the US National Hurricane Center, which is based in Miami.<\/p>\n A life-threatening storm surge of up to 13ft (4 metres) was expected across southern Jamaica, with officials concerned about the impact on some hospitals along the coastline. The health minister, Christopher Tufton, said some patients were being relocated from the ground floor to the second floor, \u201cand [we] hope that will suffice for any surge that will take place\u201d.<\/p>\n The storm is already thought to have caused seven deaths in the Caribbean, including three in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic, where another person remains missing.<\/p>\n Melissa is so unusually strong that the US military said it had moved its forces \u2013 likely to be ships and aircraft \u2013 in the vicinity of the storm to safer areas.<\/p>\n Climate scientists have said the intensification of Hurricane Melissa \u2013 with winds doubling from 70mph to 140mph in just a day \u2013 is probably a symptom of the rapid heating of the world\u2019s oceans, part of the human-driven climate crisis.<\/p>\n Climate crisis<\/p>\n Leanne Archer, a research associate in climate extremes at the University of Bristol, said: \u201cThere has been a perfect storm of conditions leading to the colossal strength of Hurricane Melissa: a warm ocean which has fuelled its rapid intensification over the last few days, but it is also moving slowly, meaning more rain can fall whilst it moves across land.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of these conditions have been supercharged by the extra heat in our oceans and atmosphere due to climate change. A warmer ocean means more energy; more strength; and more moisture in the warmer atmosphere means more rain can fall with a higher intensity.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, the world\u2019s oceans were the warmest on record, continuing a recent trend of record-breaking marine heat. And a 2023 study found that Atlantic hurricanes are now more than twice as likely as before to intensify rapidly from minor storms to powerful and catastrophic events.<\/p>\n After Jamaica, Melissa is forecast to cross Cuba and the Bahamas by Wednesday.<\/p>\n The UN\u2019s International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday that it would send solar lamps, blankets, indoor tents, generators and other items from its logistics hub in Barbados to Jamaica as soon as the storm crossed the island.<\/p>\n \u201cMany people are likely to be displaced from their homes and in urgent need of shelter and relief,\u201d said Natasha Greaves, interim head for IOM Jamaica.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hurricane Melissa has made landfall in Jamaica, where sheltering residents braced themselves against ferocious winds, heavy flood waters and landslides from the category 5 storm, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes in history. The slow-moving colossus is the most intense hurricane to hit Jamaica since records began in 1851 and will linger over the island<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[1483,102,769,8966,15031,9228,7081],"class_list":{"0":"post-31128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-century","9":"tag-hits","10":"tag-hurricane","11":"tag-jamaica","12":"tag-melissa","13":"tag-recordbreaking","14":"tag-storm"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}