{"id":105232,"date":"2025-10-26T16:09:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T16:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/105232\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T16:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T16:09:08","slug":"hurricane-melissa-strengthens-as-it-crawls-toward-jamaica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/105232\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Melissa strengthens as it crawls toward Jamaica"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hurricane Melissa has been cutting a deadly path through the Caribbean, strengthening into a Category 4 storm as it crawled along a worryingly slow course towards Jamaica and the island of Hispaniola.<\/p>\n

Melissa has already been blamed for three deaths in Haiti this week, as its outer bands brought heavy rains and landslides to the impoverished nation.<\/p>\n

In the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, a 79-year-old man was found dead after being swept away in a stream, local officials said Saturday. A 13-year-old boy was missing.<\/p>\n

“You feel powerless, unable to do anything, just run away and leave everything behind,” Angelita Francisco, a 66-year-old homemaker who fled her neighborhood in the Dominican Republic, told AFP through tears.<\/p>\n

Floodwater had inundated her house, causing her refrigerator to float away as trash bobbed around the home.<\/p>\n

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said today that Melissa had intensified into a Category 4 hurricane, packing winds of about 225km per hour.<\/p>\n

\"This
\nStorm surge crashing into a seawall before the arrival of Hurricane Melissa in Kingston<\/p>\n

The storm was expected to set off “life-threatening and catastrophic” flooding and landslides in parts of Jamaica and southern Hispaniola, the NHC said, forecasting “continued rapid intensification…followed by fluctuations in intensity.”<\/p>\n

Melissa was “expected to be a major hurricane when making landfall in Jamaica tomorrow night or Tuesday morning, and southeastern Cuba late Tuesday,” it added.<\/p>\n

As of today, Melissa was about 190km southeast of Jamaica’s capital Kingston, and 450 km southwest of Guantanamo, Cuba.<\/p>\n

The Dominican Republic’s emergency operations centre said nine of 31 provinces were on red alert yesterday due to risk of flash floods, rising rivers and landslides.<\/p>\n

Melissa could bring 38cm to 76cm of rain in portions of southern Hispaniola and Jamaica, the NHC said.<\/p>\n

\"Workers
\nWorkers prune trees ahead of the arrival of Tropical Storm Melissa in Santiago de Cuba<\/p>\n

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness yesterday urged residents of flood-prone areas to heed warnings and be prepared to evacuate.<\/p>\n

“If you live in an area that was flooded before, expect that it will flood again,” he said.<\/p>\n

Norman Manley International Airport, which serves Kingston, announced it would close yesterday evening and urged the public not to travel there.<\/p>\n

The Jamaica Information Service government agency said on Saturday that all seaports had been closed.<\/p>\n

Melissa is the 13th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from early June to late November.<\/p>\n

The last major hurricane to impact Jamaica was Beryl in early July 2024 – an abnormally strong storm for the time of year.<\/p>\n

Beryl brought downpours and strong winds to Jamaica as it moved past the island’s southern coast, leaving at least four people dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hurricane Melissa has been cutting a deadly path through the Caribbean, strengthening into a Category 4 storm as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":["post-105232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}