In this handout satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Hurricane Melissa churns northwest through the Caribbean Sea captured at 17:00Z on October 27, 2025. Hurricane Melissa has intensified into a Category 5 storm as it approaches Jamaica, according to the National Hurricane Centre. Photo / NOAA via Getty Images
As a monstrous Hurricane Melissa bore down on Jamaica, Prime Minister Andrew Holness said Monday that he had made time for one thing in addition to intense preparations.
“I have been on my knees in prayer,” he said at a news conference before the storm’s arrival, adding that he had heard from other leaders around the globe. “It would appear the entire world is praying for Jamaica.”
As of Monday afternoon, the National Hurricane Centre warned that the core of Melissa, which has been crawling along at 3m/h, was set to move near or over Jamaica late Monday and Tuesday. So strong were its winds that a NOAA aircraft gathering data inside the storm had to abandon its mission early “after experiencing severe turbulence in the southwestern eyewall”, the hurricane centre wrote in a Monday update.
Holness offered a sober assessment about the suffering Melissa is expected to inflict on the island nation with a population of more than 2.7 million.
He said the storm, which by Monday afternoon had sustained winds near 175m/h, is likely to tear off roofs, flood roads, compromise bridges, wreak havoc on the electric grid, destroy cropland and damage airports, warning that there is “no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a Category 5”.
Monday brought a litany of calls from meteorologists and public officials for those in Melissa’s path to make final preparations and to seek the safest possible place to ride out the harrowing storm.
“Do not venture out of your safe shelter,” the National Hurricane Centre wrote early on Monday. “Catastrophic and life-threatening flash flooding and numerous landslides are likely today through Tuesday. Destructive winds, especially in the mountains, will begin by this evening, leading to extensive infrastructural damage, long-lasting power and communication outages, and isolated communities.”
In Jamaica, officials said they had raced to do everything possible to prepare in the days before its arrival, including setting aside $400 million to undertake projects intended to lessen the storm’s impact. Crews have worked to clear drains and remove debris from gullies in anticipation of biblical amounts of rain that could fall on the island. They tried to gird the electrical grid for the potentially unprecedented strains it will face.
The Government said it already had positioned resources around the island in hopes of jump-starting recovery efforts the moment the storm passes, including mosquito-spraying operations to reduce the threat of dengue and other vector-borne illnesses.
By Monday afternoon, there were 800 shelters open on the island, Robert Morgan, the minister with responsibility for works, told reporters. Officials were pleading with residents to seek out such shelters, particularly in vulnerable areas where evacuation orders had been issued.
Daryl Vaz, Jamaica’s Minister of Transport, Telecommunications and Energy, said the island’s airports would remain closed until after the storm passes. All bus services had been cancelled. Tolls had been lifted on the nation’s roads.
Even so, more than 51,000 people had already reported being without electricity, mostly because trees in saturated soil toppled on to power lines.
Melissa is predicted to push ashore along Jamaica’s southwest coast before moving across the island over a period of six to nine hours. That means the most dangerous weather will probably occur in Cornwall and Middlesex counties, in central and western Jamaica.
Rain is forecast to fall in torrents, totalling up to 40 inches in the mountains, which will result in catastrophic flash flooding and landslides. Storm surge of 9 to 13 feet as well as very large waves are expected to inundate areas near the south coast where the storm makes landfall – with the highest risk in parishes such as Westmoreland, Saint Elizabeth, Manchester and Clarendon. Once the storm moves to the north side of the island and winds change, surge risks will shift into Saint James and Trelawny.
Matthew Samuda, Jamaica’s Minister of Water, Environment and Climate Change, implored residents to store as much clean water as they could in case of disruptions. “Every drop will count,” he said.
Holness said the Jamaican Government has a “multi-level” disaster response system. That includes a disaster management fund, several billion dollars in contingency funds that it can tap, as well as insurance provisions that are triggered depending on the severity of the storm.
“So, we should be able to mount a response,” he said. “But that is all dependent on the level of the catastrophe.”
If the damage from Melissa is in line with that from Hurricane Beryl, which passed just south of Jamaica as a Category 4 storm last year, then “we should be able to manage”, Holness said.
If Melissa proves far worse, then the relief and recovery will be that much more of a challenge.
Either way, Holness said he expects the storm to have a significant financial impact on Jamaica as it forces businesses to close, grinds tourism to a halt, and destroys property and infrastructure.
“All of that will have an impact on our economy,” he said.
The United States has long provided support to countries in the Caribbean after natural disasters, carrying out missions such as search-and-rescue operations and the delivery of food, water, generators and other supplies.
But the Trump Administration has cut foreign aid funding and dismantled the US Agency for International Development, shifting the agency’s remnants into the State Department. The State Department would not say whether Jamaica has specifically asked for assistance or whether it anticipates a request.
But a department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the department, said it has taken steps to help partners in the region respond to the hurricane. The United States is monitoring the situation, the official said, and a decision to deploy “additional capability will not be made until a need is identified”.
The official added that the United States has the ability to provide “lifesaving assistance to affected countries and people across the country when it is in the interest of the United States”.
As the storm barrelled toward the island, international security experts said Monday that it might be too late to leave – with little to do but prepare and hunker down.
“There’s no flights in or out right now,” said Tim Meehan, security director for International SOS, a risk assessment firm. “If you’re there, it’s kind of just batten down the hatches.”
Meehan added that he worried about the island’s infrastructure, including its airport and a key power plant, standing right in Melissa’s path. He feared the damage would be worse than that of Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, the strongest storm in Jamaica’s history.
On Sunday night, satellite intensity estimates for Melissa jumped off the charts, provisionally reaching never-before-observed wind speeds of 190mph in the Atlantic basin. Hurricane hunter observations were lower than those estimates, but their mission didn’t coincide with the satellite-estimated peak.
“We’re witnessing satellite history in the Atlantic tonight,” meteorologist Michael Lowry wrote.
Melissa also became the third hurricane of the Atlantic season to reach Category 5 strength, the second-most of any season on record.
Melissa’s impacts will spread far from its centre. Hurricane warnings cover all of Jamaica, but where exactly the storm makes landfall will influence which areas experience the worst effects. Although Melissa’s eye won’t push ashore in the country’s capital, Kingston, it could come in a few areas to the west.
Dangerous hurricane-force winds will also fling debris, flatten trees and snap power poles, especially within a 30- to 50-mile radius of the storm’s centre. Jamaica’s main island measures 150 miles from west to east and 50 miles from south to north, with tropical storm-force winds expected across the entire island and hurricane-force winds in central and western parishes.
Places such as Kingston, Norman Manley International Airport (where the elevation is 10 feet above sea level), Portmore and areas around Old Harbour Bay are susceptible to surge, particularly as the violent counterclockwise rotation around Melissa pushes ocean water through the harbours and inland. Storm surge was already reported near those areas on Sunday.
Later this week, Melissa will race across the open waters of the North Atlantic, but not before it affects several more places, including Cuba, the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and possibly Bermuda.
Melissa could make up to three landfalls in fewer than three days: after Jamaica, it will strike southeastern Cuba on Tuesday into Wednesday, before hitting the southern Bahamas later Wednesday into Thursday.
“Life-threatening storm surge is expected along portions of the southern coast of eastern Cuba late Tuesday and Tuesday night,” the hurricane centre wrote, adding that up to 20 inches of rain could fall there. “Preparations should be rushed to completion,” it said.
The storm also isn’t done hitting Haiti – where there have been three storm-related deaths, per local reports – and the Dominican Republic, as flash flood-inducing downpours will continue through Wednesday.
The storm is forecast to pass near Bermuda on Friday as it accelerates into the North Atlantic.
Around the same time, some of Melissa’s moisture will become entangled in a separate storm from the Mid-Atlantic to Atlantic Canada on Thursday and Friday, delivering heavy rain and wind that will lash areas from DC to Boston.
Melissa’s potentially historic journey will finally end in the North Atlantic late in the week, when the storm meets cooler waters and a harsh jet stream.
But on Monday evening, the storm’s demise felt far away. The focus was squarely on Jamaica and the other island nations that lay in its path.
As he addressed the nation, Holness tried to cling to optimism, reminding his fellow residents that they had weathered many storms in the past.
“Even if the worst comes, we will be able to recover,” he insisted.
He reminded them of Jamaica’s national anthem and the faith it expresses that the country will navigate even the hardest times. “Eternal Father, bless our land,” it begins. “Guard us with thy mighty hand.”
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor’s Picks, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week’s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here.