A powerful hurricane is barreling toward Jamaica with anticipation that it will be the strongest storm to hit the Caribbean island in modern history.
Hurricane Melissa began rapidly intensifying over the weekend. It is expected to make landfall early Tuesday morning in Jamaica, threatening to trigger severe flooding and catastrophic landslides, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC). Not only will the storm be strong, but its slow-moving pace across the Caribbean will likely worsen its impacts.
Melissa is also forecast to strike parts of Cuba and the Bahamas later this week. The U.S. is not expected to be affected.
As of Monday evening, Melissa was a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, meaning sustained wind speeds will be 157 miles per hour or greater and catastrophic damage will occur.
The prime minister of Jamaica, Andrew Holness, said the country has taken precautionary measures to minimize the impact of a Category 5 storm, such as relocating residents to safety and organizing recovery efforts.
"There is no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a Category 5," he said at a press conference on Monday.
Jamaica is expected to be in the storm's eyewall, which refers to the band of dense clouds surrounding the eye of the hurricane. The eyewall generally produces the fiercest winds and heaviest rainfall, according to Deanna Hence, a professor of climate, meteorology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
"Unfortunately for them, it looks like it's going to get the most intense part," she said.
Part of the threat posed by Melissa lies in its intensity combined with its slow pace.
"When you have a very slow-moving hurricane, it essentially means that one particular location will experience all of those hurricane force impacts for a longer period of time," Hence added.
A similar event took place in Texas in 2017. Hurricane Harvey's slow movement across the state unleashed more than 50 inches of rain and resulted in at least 89 deaths.
The National Hurricane Center forecasts that Melissa could dump up to 30 inches of rain on Jamaica. According to the National Weather Service, 18 to 24 inches of fast-moving rain can carry away most large SUVs and trucks.
Another concern is the island's mountainous terrain, which can cause heavy rainfall to pick up speed as it flows downhill, increasing the risk of flash flooding and landslides.
According to the NHC, eastern Cuba could receive up to 20 inches of rain while the southeast Bahamas is forecast to see up to 10 inches of rainfall. Parts of southwestern Haiti and the southern portions of the Dominican Republic are also at risk of flash flooding and landslides.
Hurricane season is underway, but climate change is also making larger, more powerful storms more common. Research suggests that slow-moving tropical storms have become more common over the past several decades.
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