Melissa becomes Category 1 hurricane; Jamaica braces for catastrophic floods

 

The Meteorological Service of Jamaica is warning citizens to complete their preparations for Melissa, which has now been upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane. 

 

The storm is expected to continue rapidly intensifying on Saturday with heavy showers projected throughout Sunday. 

 

At 1 p.m., Melissa had maximum sustained winds at 75 miles per hour with higher gusts. 

 

On Saturday morning, day four of a special briefing on the storm, Principal Director of the Met Service Evan Thompson gave the latest projected path for the storm ahead of landfall in Jamaica as a Category 4 hurricane.

 

"It's expected to move toward the west and when it is south of Jamaica, south of Clarendon in particular, it's expected to start moving toward the north. At that time, it is expected to be, all this time it is expected to be a major hurricane because what we are expecting after today is that there will be rapid intensification of this system. That's a phase that some of these hurricanes go through, especially in these days of climate change. We find that this rapid intensification is becoming much more frequent, where there is a period where they just jump from one category to the next in just a couple of hours. So this is what we are expecting to occur with Tropical Storm Melissa, soon to become Hurricane Melissa, and it will continue to move toward the southern coastline of Jamaica."

 

Mr. Thompson said the storm should make impact with the southern coastline by Tuesday morning. 

 

"Today is Saturday morning, so we have about three days of movement. During this period, we will be experiencing quite a bit of rainfall because the rains are expected to begin any time now. You would have experienced some brief showers already, but because of that cloud mass that you would see on the earlier image...you'll see that we are basically starting to experience the rainfall Jamaica to the western side." 

 

He says the intensity of the storm is likely to decrease as it moves toward the north coast.

 

The storm is projected to produce rainfall amounts reaching up to 650 millimetres or 25 inches over parts of Jamaica. This means catastrophic flash floods and landslides are likely.

 

Mr. Thompson said rainfall is projected to begin in eastern parishes - St. Thomas, Portland, Kingston and St. Andrew, then progress to St. Mary before moving to St. Catherine, Clarendon and Manchester, and to some extent, St. Ann in the north. 

 

"But because the system is going to be approaching more from the southern side below the country, if you're looking at the map, we're going to experience more of the rainfall at that point. As we go through Sunday and into Monday, the rainfall will become heaviest, mainly St. Thomas, Kingston, St. Andrew, St. Catherine, Clarendon, Manchester, going across into St. Elizabeth and eventually Westmoreland to a lesser extent, slightly lesser extent."

 

 

Jamaicans are being advised to brace for at least five days of severe weather conditions, including heavy rainfall and increasing wind speeds. 

 

"We are expecting that storm force winds are expected to start being experienced in eastern parts of the island by this evening. And then as we go through tomorrow, those storm force winds will continue right across the country. We expect that we will experience the hurricane force winds starting to impact the island on Monday morning. It's likely that it will be Monday morning. So we are going to go through almost 48 hours of storm force winds affecting sections of the island before the hurricane force winds actually begin to impact us. And that is expected to continue right through Monday, right through Tuesday, right through Wednesday. And then we could be starting to experience some weakening in terms of the wind speeds."

 

But he noted that even as the hurricane moves away, it is likely to continue impacting the country for another two days. 

 

"So expect that throughout next week we will be impacted by the system. It will be very difficult to move around," he cautioned. 

 

But hurricanes have a way, even if the centre has moved away from you, the impact of the system usually continues for another two days.