How Hurricane Melissa’s slow pace may cause more damage : NPR
In this satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Hurricane Melissa is moving northwest across the Caribbean Sea, captured on October 27.
NOAA/Getty Images South America
hide caption
toggle caption
NOAA/Getty Images South America
A powerful hurricane is heading toward Jamaica with hopes it will be the strongest storm to hit the Caribbean island in modern history.
Hurricane Melissa began to rapidly intensify over the weekend. It is expected to make landfall early Tuesday morning in Jamaica, threatening to trigger severe flooding and catastrophic landslides, according to authorities. National Hurricane Center (NHC). Not only will the storm be violent, but its slow progress across the Caribbean will likely worsen its impacts.
Melissa is also expected to hit parts of Cuba and the Bahamas later this week. The United States should not be affected.
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.
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said the country had taken precautionary measures to minimize the impact of a Category 5 storm, such as moving residents to safe locations 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.
Fishing boats are moored on Queen Street at Port Royal in Kingston, Jamaica on October 27.
Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images
Jamaica is expected to be in the eye of the storm, which refers to the band of dense clouds surrounding the eye of the hurricane. The eyewall typically produces the strongest winds and heaviest precipitation, according to Deanna Because, a professor of climate, meteorology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“Unfortunately for them, it looks like this will be the most intense part,” she said.
Part of the threat Melissa poses is her intensity combined with her slowness.
“When you have a hurricane that’s moving very slowly, that basically means that a particular location will experience all of these hurricane force impacts for a longer period of time.”
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 brought at least 89 deaths.
The National Hurricane Center predicts that Melissa could dump up to 30 inches of rain on Jamaica. According to the National Weather Service18 to 24 inches of rapid rain can wash away most large SUVs and trucks.
Another concern is the island’s mountainous terrain, which can cause heavy rainfall to accelerate as it descends, increasing the risk of flash floods and landslides.
According to the NHC, eastern Cuba could receive up to 20 inches of rain, while the southeastern Bahamas is expected to receive up to 10 inches of rain. Parts of southwest Haiti and the south 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 last decades.
