A slow, furious storm: Melissa’s march through the Caribbean
There are moments when weather stops being a headline and becomes a household sound — the river in the street, the low rumble of wind like an animal circling the house, the radio repeating caution in a voice that has grown hoarse. Hurricane Melissa is one of those moments. What began as a distant swirl over warm Atlantic waters hardened into a Category 4 monster, its outer bands already delivering deadly rain and landslides across the island of Hispaniola and threatening to strike Jamaica with full force.
Forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Center recorded sustained winds near 225 km/h as Melissa intensified, and warned that the storm could dump between 38 and 76 centimetres of rain over parts of southern Hispaniola and Jamaica. It was, at the time, roughly 190 km southeast of Kingston and about 450 km southwest of Guantánamo, Cuba — a massive system crawling toward populated coasts with the leisurely menace of something that refuses to hurry.
Lives overturned, landscapes erased
In Haiti, where fragile slopes meet precarious housing, the storm’s first kisses were cruel. Authorities confirmed three deaths linked to sudden landslides and flood-swollen rivers. In the Dominican Republic — where mountains and river valleys share intimate borders with communities — a 79-year-old man was swept away, and a 13-year-old boy has been reported missing.
“It felt like the house wanted to lift me out,” said Marisol, 66, a homemaker who left her neighbourhood on the southern plains as rivers rose. “My refrigerator floated like a little boat. We carried what we could and left the rest. You don’t feel brave; you feel very small.” She paused, listening to the rain. “You pray the walls hold.”
These are not statistics on a map. They are kitchen tables split by water, shoes piled in the yards of people who will not know whether the next rainy season will bring more or less. They are a reminder that vulnerability is uneven — shaped by wealth, terrain, and the old, unromantic geography of who can afford a sturdy roof.
Communities bracing — and fleeing
In Kingston, the mood was urgent. Prime Minister Andrew Holness urged people living in flood-prone areas to evacuate and not treat warnings as mere suggestions. “If your street flooded last season, don’t wait to see if this time will be different,” he told reporters. Officials closed Norman Manley International Airport and all seaports, a hard decision in an island economy that depends on tourism and trade.
At a makeshift shelter in a parish hall, volunteers handed out blankets and bowls of rice stew. “We set up beds, charged phones, listened,” said Carol Bennett, a shelter coordinator. “People here are proud, but when the water comes they come in together. You always see the same faces — fishermen, market women, teachers. The community is what will get us through the next 72 hours.”
Emergency alerts and red zones
Authorities in the Dominican Republic put nine out of 31 provinces on red alert, citing the imminent possibility of flash floods, rising rivers and landslides. Emergency services ran continuous checks on evacuation routes, and social services teams tried to reach remote hamlets where muddy lanes become impassable after an hour of downpour.
“Our priority is saving lives and moving people out of harm’s way,” said Jorge Alvarez, director of an emergency operations centre. “We know the places that flood first. We know the people who need help. It becomes a question of how fast we can act when a storm refuses to be fast.”
The costs of a slow-moving hurricane
There is a particular cruelty to a storm that crawls. Rapid intensification — the NHC noted that Melissa was expected to strengthen further even as it fluctuated in intensity — means destructive winds and prolonged rain. That combination drives two of the most lethal hazards in the region: storm surge and landslide. A seawall in Kingston already splashed and creaked under heavy rollers; further surge could overtop defences that have been patched and rebuilt over recent years.
For scholars of climate and weather, Melissa is part of an unsettling trend. Warmer sea-surface temperatures feed hurricanes’ engines, and a slower forward speed increases rainfall totals in localized areas. Scientists don’t point to a single storm and say ‘this is climate change,’ but the pattern of intense storms and prolonged rainfall is consistent with what many models predict. As climatologist Dr. Laila Chen put it: “We’re seeing a climate that amplifies extremes — storms that are stronger, slower, and wetter. That’s not distant theory; it’s the math of our daily news.”
What it means for the wider region
Melissa is the 13th named storm of the Atlantic season, which officially runs from June through November. The season already has offered surprises: earlier this year, Hurricane Beryl surged into Jamaica in July, an unusually early major hurricane that left at least four people dead. A string of such events strains disaster response systems and strains communities who are still rebuilding from the last blow.
Jamaica’s economy, which leans heavily on tourism and agriculture, faces immediate impacts when transport hubs, ports and airports close. Slips in sugarcane and coffee harvests, delays in shipping, and interruption of daily markets ripple through households. “When the ports shut, it’s not just the cruise ships,” noted economist Tanya Reid. “It’s fuel, it’s food imports, it’s the small exporters who sell fruit and flowers. A few days of closure can become a week of lost income.”
Practical steps — and human resilience
There are practical steps people can take now: confirm evacuation routes, keep water and medications ready, move valuables to higher ground, and stay tuned to verified official sources. But there is also the human instinct that statistics can’t measure: stories of neighbours carrying the elderly up staircases, of fishermen pulling boats inland, of students handing out flashlights to share news in creaky, candlelit rooms.
- Know your evacuation zone and nearest shelter.
- Store at least 72 hours of water and essential medicines.
- Secure loose outdoor objects and move furniture upstairs if possible.
- Keep battery power for radios and have cash on hand.
Looking beyond the storm
When the rain finally eases and the wind drops, the immediate work will be to clear roads, assess the damage, and help families rebuild. But there is a longer conversation ahead: investment in resilient infrastructure, improved hill-slope management in places prone to landslides, and more robust early-warning systems that reach remote communities in time.
“We will clean up, yes,” said Rosa Mendoza, a schoolteacher in a highland town, “but when I look at the younger kids, I think of the next generation. Are we teaching them to live with these storms, or helping them change the conditions that make each storm a tragedy? We need both.”
What can you do right now?
If you have family or friends in the path of Melissa, reach out to them, share reliable updates, and offer support. If you’re farther away, consider donating to verified humanitarian organizations that work year-round in disaster-prone areas — it’s often the local NGOs and community groups who arrive first and stay longest.
And if you live near coasts or river valleys yourself: ask yourself hard questions. How prepared is your neighbourhood? How easy would it be for you and your neighbours to get to higher ground? Hurricanes don’t respect borders, but the choices communities and governments make in their aftermath do shape who recovers and who remains at risk.
For now, the Caribbean waits and watches, radios tuned to the NHC and the crackle of local stations. Families brace their doors, volunteers stack sandbags, and a region long accustomed to storms steels itself for what Melissa will leave behind. The numbers — 225 km/h winds, 38–76 cm of rain, 13 named storms so far — tell part of the story. The rest lives in the hands of the people who will clear the mud and lift the roofs, again and again.
