Hurricane Melissa escalated to a Category 5 storm on Monday amidst warnings of “life-threatening flash flooding,” landslides, and “destructive winds” expected to hit ahead of its Tuesday landfall.
The storm is projected to be the most severe ever to impact the island.
“Many of these communities will not survive this flooding,” Desmond McKenzie, Jamaica’s minister of local government, cautioned during a news conference on Monday. “I want to urge Jamaicans to take this seriously.”
The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) advised local residents not to leave their shelters.
Seven communities were placed under emergency evacuation orders starting on Sunday night. More than 800 shelters have been opened across Jamaica, although only 218 people had sought refuge in the shelters as of Sunday night, McKenzie reported.
Fishermen along the island’s coast began gathering their boats and securing their goods on Sunday night, according to reports. Dennis Gordon, a vendor at the Ocho Rios Craft Market, told a local media outlet he was preparing for the impact, referencing the catastrophic Category 4 Hurricane Gilbert in 1998. “We [will] take a good while to come back on our feet,” he stated. “We go through Gilbert and it was very, very, bad; out of food, out of water, out of light. I can only hope it don’t reach back to this because it’s coming serious.”
Category 5 storms—the highest classification a hurricane can achieve on the Saffir-Simpson scale and powerful enough to create “uninhabitable conditions”— typically result in roof failures, wall collapses, and downed poles and trees.
Meteorologists are alerting residents to the destructive winds, which are anticipated to cause extensive infrastructural damage and power outages in “isolated communities” beginning Monday evening. Melissa already had sustained winds measuring 160 mph, according to the NHC’s most recent update.
International food organizations are preparing for the storm’s devastation. The International Organization for Migration indicated it is coordinating the distribution of food and other supplies, which are scheduled to arrive in Jamaica by Thursday.
And more than 20 inches of rainfall are predicted to pour on the Caribbean island, causing a “life-threatening storm surge” along the southern coast through Tuesday.
The weather phenomenon will then reach Cuba by Tuesday evening, downgraded to a Category 3 storm.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic will also face perilous flash flooding and landslides. Three people in Haiti have been killed as a result of the storm, which also wiped out nearly 40 acres of maize. At least one individual in the Dominican Republic remains missing. More than 750 homes in the country have been impacted by Melissa. Tropical storm conditions in the two countries are expected to persist through Wednesday.
Melissa marks the third Category 5 storm of the 2025 hurricane season.
