On the Edge of the Sea: Jamaica Waits as Melissa Creeps In
At dusk, Port Royal looked like a painting of a town holding its breath. Children chased each other along a wind-whipped shoreline while an elderly man tied a tarp to a weathered boat. Across the harbor, a row of shuttered shops and a palm tree stripped of its fronds testified to storms past. The air was heavy, tasting of salt and the impossibility of staying put.
“I am not moving. I don’t believe I can run from death,” said Roy Brown, a plumber and tiler, his voice steady but small against the roar of the gathering sea. He had lived through hurricanes before; he knows the stories of shelters flooded with mosquitoes, leaking roofs and sleeping mats that breed more fear than safety. “Those shelters—sometimes they are worse than the storm,” he added.
This is Jamaica today: an island braced for Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 behemoth lumbering toward its shores at a crawl of about 4 km/h—slower than most people walk. Late yesterday the U.S. National Hurricane Center placed the storm some 240 km from Kingston, its sustained winds whistling near 280 km/h (roughly 174 mph). Officials warned that Melissa could cut diagonally across the island, entering near St Elizabeth on the south coast and exiting around St Ann on the north.
Numbers That Mean Lives
The statistics that matter here are stark and immediate: three people in Jamaica have already died preparing for the storm—pruning trees and fixing roofs—while three died in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic. Meteorologists have forecast up to 100 cm (about 39 inches) of rain in places. Storm surge along Jamaica’s southern coast could push water as high as four metres—over 13 feet—creating “destructive waves” that will reshape beaches, roads and livelihoods.
There are roughly 880 shelters standing by across the island, but only 133 were reported to be occupied. “They should be seeing people now,” Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie said, urging those in vulnerable parishes to seek higher ground at once. Prime Minister Andrew Holness appealed to the country’s sense of communal duty: “The evacuation is about the national good of saving lives,” he said. “You have been warned. It’s now up to you to use that information to make the right decision.”
The Choice to Stay
Why do so many remain? Some, like Brown, distrust the shelters. Others simply cannot leave homes and livelihoods unattended. “We have fishermen who depend on their boats. If they don’t get back in time, they’ll lose their nets and we will be hungry,” said Jennifer Ramdial, who has fished these waters for decades. “I just don’t want to leave.”
In the Flagaman farming community of St Elizabeth, shop owner Enrico Coke opened his doors as a refuge. “I’m worried about the farmers and fishers,” he said. “They’ll be suffering after this. We’ll need help as soon as possible, especially clean water.” This small act—turning a shop into a shelter—is the kind of improvisation that often threads communities together in crisis.
Slow Motion, Catastrophic Consequences
Melissa’s lethargic pace is not a mercy. When a storm crawls instead of races, its destructive powers multiply: rain lingers over the same hillsides, saturating soils until landslides become inevitable; rivers swell and then crest, flooding settlements for days; persistent winds tear at infrastructure until power grids fail and communications go dark.
“Water kills a lot more people than wind,” cautioned Dr. Kerry Emanuel, a prominent meteorologist. The warning matters: the NHC has flagged the possibility of “catastrophic” flash flooding and landslides, and long-lasting outages of power and communications. The 100 cm rainfall forecast would overwhelm drainage systems in towns and wash out mountainous roads that already median the island’s fragile connectivity.
Comparisons and Context
People speak of Maria and Katrina in the same breath as Melissa—names that have come to symbolize loss, rebuilding and displacement. Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017. Katrina’s imprint on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is a reminder of how long recovery can take and how quickly social safety nets can fray.
The last significant hurricane to batter Jamaica was Beryl in July 2024, notable for being unusually intense for that time of year. Now, a Category 5 in the Caribbean threatens to surpass more than wind and rain; it threatens memory, history and livelihoods.
Why These Storms Are Getting Worse
Scientists are clear that the character of hurricanes is changing. Warmer sea surface temperatures give storms more fuel; a warmer atmosphere can hold roughly 7% more water vapor for every 1°C of warming, which translates to more intense rainfall during storms. Rapid intensification—where storms strengthen quickly over short periods—has become more common, and Melissa is an example of such a trend.
“Human-caused climate change is making all of the worst aspects of Hurricane Melissa even worse,” said climate scientist Daniel Gilford. “We aren’t just seeing one-off events; we’re seeing a shift in the baseline of risk.” For island nations like Jamaica—population approximately 2.9 million—this shift raises existential questions about infrastructure, food security and migration.
What Could Break—and What Might Hold
Officials have warned that much of the island’s western end may not withstand Category 5 conditions. “I don’t believe there is any infrastructure within this region that could withstand a Category 5 storm, so there could be significant dislocation,” Prime Minister Holness told CNN.
Anticipated impacts include:
- Widespread power outages affecting tens of thousands of homes and businesses;
- Road and bridge damage from landslides and flooding, isolating rural communities;
- Agricultural losses—sugarcane, yams, bananas and small-scale farms—that could reverberate through food prices;
- Damage to the fishing fleet and coastal infrastructure, threatening livelihoods for weeks if not months.
Stories in the Quiet Before the Storm
In a small parochial church in St Elizabeth, parishioners packed sandbags and prayed. “You cannot buy faith,” whispered a volunteer handing out bottled water. At a school gymnasium used as a shelter, mothers folded clothes and tried to calm toddlers who had never known the sound of a Category 5 wind.
“Every storm is different,” said Dr. Amara Reid, an emergency response coordinator. “Preparation is never perfect, but timing is everything. A fast evacuation can save lives; too slow, and you get trapped. The sad reality is that the most vulnerable—elderly, disabled, poor—are the least able to move.”
After the Eye
After crossing Jamaica, Melissa is expected to move toward eastern Cuba. The path beyond is uncertain; storms of this magnitude often leave a trail of damage and a long, messy recovery. International aid, regional cooperation and resilient local plans will determine how quickly communities stitch themselves back together.
For now, the choice in the hands of each Jamaican is intensely personal: to stay and ride out history, or to seek refuge and hope the floodplain is not their history. What would you do if faced with that decision—stay in a familiar home you have weathered before, or step into a crowded shelter and cede control to the unknown?
In the end, Hurricanes like Melissa are both meteorological events and moral tests: of leadership, of communal solidarity, of whether we treat preparation like an act of love. If you are reading this from afar, consider this a witness’s account—and an invitation to lean into compassion for those who will, tonight, sleep with the sound of the sea at the door.
