Why Hurricane Melissa’s intensity and slow speed are a recipe for disaster

A powerful hurricane is barreling towards Jamaica, expected to be the strongest storm to hit the Caribbean island in modern history.

Hurricane Melissa began rapidly intensifying this weekend. It is expected to make landfall in Jamaica early Tuesday morning, threatening severe flooding and catastrophic landslides, the agency said. National Hurricane Center (NHC). Not only will the storm be powerful, but its slow pace of movement across the Caribbean will likely worsen its effects.

Melissa is also expected to attack parts of Cuba and the Bahamas later this week. The US is not expected to be affected.

As of Monday evening, Melissa was a category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, meaning sustained winds will be 155 miles per hour or higher and catastrophic damage will occur.

Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness said the country has taken precautions to minimize the impact of a Category 5 storm, such as moving residents to safety and organizing recovery efforts.

“There is no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a Category 5,” he said at a press conference on Monday.

Fishing boats are stuck on Queen Street in Port Royal in Kingston, Jamaica on October 27.

Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images

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Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images

Jamaica is expected to be in the storm’s eyewall, which refers to the band of dense clouds around the eye of the hurricane. The eyewall generally produces the strongest winds and heaviest rainfall, according to Deanna Hence, professor of climate, meteorology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“Unfortunately for them, it looks like this is going to be the most intense part,” she said.

Part of Melissa’s threat lies in its intensity combined with its slow pace.

“If you have a very slow-moving hurricane, that essentially means that a particular location is going to experience all those hurricane-force impacts over an extended period of time,” Hence added.

A similar event occurred in Texas in 2017. Hurricane Harvey’s slow movement across the state dumped more than 60 inches of rain and resulted in at least 89 dead.

The National Hurricane Center predicts that Melissa could dump up to 28 inches of rain on Jamaica. According to the National Weather Service18 to 24 inches of fast-moving rain can sweep away most large SUVs and trucks.

Another concern is the island’s mountainous terrain, which can cause heavy rainfall to increase in speed as it flows downhill, increasing the risk of flash floods and landslides.

According to the NHC, up to 20 inches of rain could fall in eastern Cuba, while up to 10 inches of rain is forecast in the southeastern Bahamas. Parts of southwestern Haiti and southern parts of the Dominican Republic are also at risk of flash flooding and landslides.

Hurricane season is underway, but climate change is also making larger, more powerful storms more common. Research shows that slow-moving tropical storms do become more common over the past decades.