The rapid strengthening of hurricanes has become increasingly common over the past 40 years.
Many hurricane experts believe that record sea surface temperatures are helping surpercharge tropical storms, with suggestions that the extra heat being stored in the oceans from global warming is fueling the explosive development of the storms.
Warm air rising from the ocean surface creates pressure gradients that cause a system of rotating clouds and strong winds capable of raising the sea level nearby and causing storm surges.
Is it safe to travel to Jamaica?
Workers board up shop windows before the hurricane’s arrival
MATIAS DELACROIX/AP
It is currently not possible to travel to Jamaica, with airports and ports closed until further notice. Under normal circumstances the island country is a safe and popular holiday destination for British travellers, but the arrival of Hurricane Melissa has caused significant damage and destruction.
The Foreign Office has not explicitly warned against non-essential travel to Jamaica but it has updated its guidance to say that Hurricane Melissa is expected to bring “exceptional levels of rainfall to the whole of Jamaica … Catastrophic flash floods and landslides are likely.”
• Read in full: Latest Foreign Office travel advice for Jamaica
British tourists’ anger at no travel warning
British nationals were urged by the Foreign Office to register their presence through a government portal as many have expressed concern that no travel warnings were issued before the storm.
As many as 8,000 of British tourists were stranded in Jamaica after hurricane Melissa wreaked havoc on the island.
Carl Pheasant, a 61-year-old British tourist in Jamaica, told The Guardian: “We would have moved our holiday otherwise.
“When we were brought to our room, we initially thought we had been given an upgrade but we didn’t realise it was because of safety, and it seems very secure.
He added: “It could be a lot worse. I feel sorry for the Jamaicans and a lot of people who are in wooden houses. They are in a much worse situation than we are.”
Third-worst hurricane to hit Caribbean
Melissa ranked as the third most intense hurricane recorded in the Caribbean after Wilma in 2005 and Gilbert in 1988, according to the American forecasting service AccuWeather. Gilbert was the last major storm that hit Jamaica.
Warming oceans are making hurricanes more intense and faster, according to climate scientists.
Caribbean leaders have previously called on wealthy, heavy-polluting countries in Europe and North America to provide aid or debt relief to island countries in tropical climates.
China’s ambassador to Cuba has announced aid packages are being sent to the island.
“The family kits donated by the Chinese Red Cross Society to the Cuban Red Cross are pre-positioned and ready for the response to Hurricane Melissa,” Hua Xin wrote on X.
Photographs showed boxes labelled as “family kit”, said to contain toothbrushes, cutlery, slippers, blankets and other essentials.
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Xin shared a video of hundreds of the packages being transported from a warehouse.
“The family kits donated by China are now being shipped from Havana to support the eastern provinces in responding to Hurricane Melissa,” he said.
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Cuba mobilises specialists for recovery efforts
Miguel Díaz-Canel, the president of Cuba, said “multiple brigades” had been situated in the eastern parts of the country to help with recovery efforts.
Díaz-Canel told the state newspaper, Granma: “There are already brigades specialising in electricity, water resources, communications and construction that will work alongside the forces in each territory, jointly, on the recovery efforts.
“We know that this cyclone will cause a lot of damage … we will have the full capacity to recover in food production, in the reconstruction of homes that are destroyed or damaged, in the recovery of the economy, and also in the recovery and vitality of the country’s main productive and social processes.”
Evacuation orders in Bahamas
Evacuation orders have been issued for six islands in the Bahamas, including Acklins and Crooked Island, as Hurricane Melissa’s path heads toward the central and southeastern parts of the Commonwealth nation.
Officials warned of flooding and a possible 8ft storm surge, according to the country’s Disaster Risk Management Authority.
“The time for preparation has now come to an end,” the state minister, Leon Lundy, said on Tuesday, before urging those in the storm’s path to seek shelter.
The prime minister ordered the evacuation of Acklins, Crooked Island, Long Cay, Inagua, Mayaguana, and the Ragged Island.
Jamaican PM expects fatalities after storm
“Some loss of life” is expected in Jamaica but the death toll currently remains unknown.
Andrew Holness, the prime minister, said after the storm had passed that the government had not yet received any confirmed storm-related fatalities. He told CNN that given the strength of Hurricane Melissa, “we are expecting that there would be some loss of life”.
The storm hit Jamaica on Tuesday, starting with the island’s southwestern town of New Hope, with sustained winds of up to 185mph (295kph), according to the American National Hurricane Center.
In pictures: record Atlantic hurricane passes over islands
A school is used as a shelter in Les Cayes, Haiti
PATRICE NOEL/REUTERS
Children evacuate Santiago de Cuba
ERNESTO MASTRASCUSA/EPA
Rocky Point, Jamaica
MATIAS DELACROIX/AP
Kingston, the Jamaican capital
RUDOLPH BROWN/EPA
Residents evacuate Playa Siboney, in Cuba
YAMIL LAGE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Hurricane Melissa, on a northeast trajectory, makes landfall as a category 3 storm in Playa Dos Rios, Cuba
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Jamaica to open airports for relief
About 25,000 tourists — 8,000 of them British — were trapped on the island after both international airports in Kingston and Montego Bay were closed on Sunday.
The transport minister, Daryl Vaz, said that Kingston’s airport could be reopened for emergency relief flights as soon as Thursday.
Beyond the sturdy resort hotels and ruined holidays, there were broader fears for the resident population, which included 50,000 dual British-Jamaican nationals, as Hurricane Melissa ripped into the island’s infrastructure.
Jamaica suffered ‘one of its worst periods’, says PM
Jamaica’s coastal areas faced wipeout from an ocean surge of up to 5.5m (18ft) and flash floods inland from up to almost a metre of rain. Roads collapsed, bridges were submerged and mountain communities were expected to be cut off by flooding and landslides. Power and communications outages were widespread.
The category 5 storm made landfall on Jamaica after 10am yesterday
NOAA/ZUMA/SHUTTERSTOCK
Desmond McKenzie, the minister of local government and community development, gave an update on Tuesday evening as the storm’s eye tracked off land.
McKenzie said that infrastructure had been “severely compromised”, with more than 530,000 residents left without electricity as of 4pm local time, which equated to about 77 per cent of Jamaica Public Service Company customers across the island. “Jamaica’s gone through what I can call one of its worst periods,” he said.
Waves flood St Thomas in southeast Jamaica
XINHUA/SHUTTERSTOCK
There were “close to 15,000” residents in emergency shelters across the island, he said, adding: “We also noticed that there are communities where residents have gone and have created makeshift shelters.”
Damage in Jamaica revealed
The scale of damage in Jamaica is beginning to come into view after Hurricane Melissa became the strongest storm to strike the island in 174 years of record-keeping.
The storm took hours to cross over Jamaica, a passage over land that diminished its winds, dropping down to category 3 with winds of 125mph from the maximum level of 5.
Strong winds continued in Jamaica overnight, with hundreds of thousands left without power and many roads impassable.
The storm, which made landfall in Jamaica as a category 5, was one of the most intense seen in the Atlantic basin, meteorologists said, with a “textbook” structure and “hellacious” sustained winds of 185mph (298km/h) that wreaked crippling devastation.
“I have been on my knees in prayer,” Andrew Holness, the prime minister, said. “There is no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a category 5.”
Storm weakens in strength aproaching Cuba
Hurricane Melissa weakened to a category 3 storm before reaching Cuba on Wednesday, United States weather officials said.
“Melissa is expected to remain a powerful hurricane when it moves across Cuba and the Bahamas and passes near Bermuda,” the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory.
The storm had been “re-strengthening” to a category 4 hurricane as it approached eastern Cuba, the agency had said on Wednesday before revising the storm down.
