Melissa strengthens into a Category 4 hurricane, posing dire threat to Jamaica and Haiti

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Hurricane Melissa strengthened into a major Category 4 hurricane, with the possibility of intensifying to a Category 5 storm Sunday night, unleashing torrential rain and threatening to cause catastrophic flooding in the northern Caribbean, including Haiti and Jamaica, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

The weather agency added that Melissa is likely to reach the southern coast of Jamaica as a major hurricane late Monday or Tuesday morning, and urged people on the island to seek shelter immediately.

“Conditions [in Jamaica] are going to go down rapidly today,” Jamie Rhome, the center’s deputy director, said Sunday. “Be ready to ride this out for several days.”

Melissa on Sunday morning was centered about 110 miles south-southeast of Kingston, the Jamaican capital, and about 285 miles south-southwest of Guantanamo, Cuba, near the site of a U.S. naval base. It had maximum sustained winds of 140 mph and was moving west at 5 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.

Melissa was expected to drop torrential rains of up to 30 inches on Jamaica and southern Hispaniola — the island comprising Haiti and the Dominican Republic — according to the hurricane center. Some areas may see as much as 40 inches of rain.

It also warned that extensive damage to infrastructure, power and communication outages, and the isolation of communities in Jamaica were to be expected.

Melissa should be near or over Cuba by late Tuesday, where it could bring up to 12 inches of rain, before moving toward the Bahamas on Wednesday.

Airports closed, shelters activated

Jamaica’s two main airports, the Norman Manley International Airport and the Sangster International Airport, were closed by Sunday.

Local officials said they were considering enforcing an evacuation order, as many residents of low-lying and flood-prone areas did not heed advice to evacuate.

“The question of the mandatory movement will soon be addressed,” Desmond McKenzie, who is leading the Jamaican government’s disaster response, said at a news conference. Melissa is forecast to reach Category 5 when it makes landfall along the south coast Tuesday.

McKenzie also said all the more than 650 shelters in Jamaica are open. Officials said earlier that warehouses across the island were well-stocked and thousands of food packages prepositioned for quick distribution.

Evan Thompson, the principal director of the Meteorological Service of Jamaica, said the storm surge is expected mainly over the southern side of the island.

“There is potential [for] flooding in every parish of our country,” Thompson said. “If you’re in a flood-prone, low-lying area, you need to take note. If you’re near a river course or a gully, you need to take special note and find some alternative location that you can move to should you be threatened by the heavy rainfall.”

Some foreign governments are also preparing for the hurricane’s arrival in Jamaica.

The government of Antigua and Barbuda is housing visiting students at a hotel in Kingston. As of Sunday morning, 52 of them had checked in. Students from other islands were staying at the same hotel, though it remained unclear whether they were sponsored by their governments.

“They have a better bounce-back regimen here [at the hotel] in terms of standby power and water in comparison with university dorms,” said Jewel Moore, 19, a chemistry student at UWI Mona. She and her fellow students are enjoying snacks and games before the hurricane arrives.

“The passing of the storm should be OK,” he added. “It’s getting out that will be a problem.”

At least four people have died in the slow-moving storm — three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic, where another person remains missing.

Communities cut off by rising water

Haitian authorities said that in addition to the storm-related deaths, five people were injured from a collapsed wall. There were also reports of rising river levels, flooding and a bridge destroyed by breached riverbanks in Sainte-Suzanne, in the northeast.

Many residents are still reluctant to leave their homes, Haitian officials said.

The storm damaged nearly 200 homes in the Dominican Republic and knocked out water supply systems, affecting more than half a million customers. It downed trees and traffic lights, unleashed a couple of small landslides and left more than two dozen communities isolated by floodwaters.

The Bahamas Department of Meteorology said Melissa could bring tropical storm or hurricane conditions to islands in the southeast and central Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands by early this week.

Melissa is the 13th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had predicted an above-normal season with 13 to 18 named storms.

Savarese and Myers write for the Associated Press and reported from São Paulo, Brazil, and Kingston, respectively.