Hurricane Melissa spun into a Category 5 monster on Monday, churning toward Jamaica with what will likely be the most powerful winds ever recorded on the Caribbean island.

Melissa, which also is expected to dump several feet of rain, has already been blamed for a handful of deaths in Haiti and Jamaica and the toll will almost certainly rise. Damage is expected to be catastrophic as the hurricane slams into Jamaica’s south-central coast around midmorning Tuesday.

As of 11 a.m. Eastern time Monday, the National Hurricane Center found the hurricane had maximum sustained winds of 165 mph. The winds were so strong inside the eyewall of the storm that a NOAA Hurricane Hunter plane made the rare choice to head back early after experiencing severe turbulence.

While Jamaica has been battered by hurricanes for centuries, it has never seen a Category 4 hurricane pass across the island, much less a Category 5, said Evan Thompson, the chief meteorologist of Meteorological Service of Jamaica. Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 approach the island as a Category 4 storm, but Thompson said it crossed the island as a Category 3.

“A Category 4 hurricane is more than we have experienced before moving across the island,” Thompson told the Jamaica Gleaner. “We have not had this experience before, so it’s important for us to consider this as an extraordinary situation,”

Portions of the island have already been doused with more than a foot of rain during Melissa’s approach, and forecasters said up to 30 more inches could be on the way. That’s on top of storm surge, which is expected to reach 9 to 13 feet above land, particularly on Jamaica’s southeast coast.

The damage from Melissa’s strong winds and deep pockets of flooding rain will be worsened by the storm’s incredibly slow speed. On Monday morning, the monster storm was crawling forward at only 3 mph.

Forecasters said that sets Jamaica up to be battered for days — far beyond the daylong impacts of the storm’s eye. It’s similar to what Cat 5 Dorian did in 2019 to the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas, which it left bulldozed after the hurricane parked over the islands.

Melissa is now the third Category 5 to form this hurricane season. The only hurricane season with more Category 5s on record — 2005 — saw four of them.

Melissa could strengthen or weaker a bit more between now and landfall on Tuesday, forecasters said, particularly if it develops a new eye to replace its current one. But regardless, the storm is expected to be devastating for Jamaica.

“There is no practical difference in Melissa making landfall in Jamaica at category 4 or 5 intensity, since both categories produce catastrophic wind damage.,” the hurricane center wrote in the 11 a.m. Monday update.

And there are potentially two more landfalls in store for Melissa this week. It’s currently forecast to slam into Cuba as a Category 3, major hurricane and then cross the Bahamas as a Category 2 before finally picking up the pace and racing out to sea.

The Caribbean is blanketed in storm watches and warnings, including hurricane warnings for all of Jamaica and the Cuban provinces of Granma, Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo and Holguin.

Turks and Caicos, as well as the Southeastern Bahamas, are under a hurricane watch. And Haiti and the Cuban province of Las Tunas remain under a tropical storm warning.

Days of rain have already claimed multiple lives in the Caribbean. In Haiti, officials have counted three deaths, 16 injured people, 450 flooded homes and 10 damaged homes, mostly to the southwest. Several bridges are down and hundreds of people remain in shelters across the nation, according to the Sunday update from the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency.

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