Historic Hurricane Melissa Makes Landfall

Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday (October 28) as the strongest storm to ever hit the island nation, NBC News reports.

The Category 5 hurricane was reported to have sustained winds of 185 MPH, which tied with the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and Hurricane Dorian in 2019 in the Caribbean and the second-highest wind speed recorded in the Atlantic, behind only Hurricane Allen in 1980, when it made landfall.

The "catastrophic" Category 5 storm was predicted to make landfall early Tuesday morning on a diagonal path across Jamaica in what the U.S. National Hurricane Center warned could be the largest hurricane ever recorded for the Caribbean island.

Hurricane Melissa's wingspan was reported to be larger than the length of the entire country of Jamaica, with forecasters warning that the island could deal with days of catastrophic winds never-before-seen, up to 3 feet of rain as it progresses and a life-threatening storm surge reaching up to 13 feet across southern Jamaica.

“There is no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a Category 5,” said Prime Minister Andrew Holness during the hours before the storm was projected to strike via the New York Post. “The question now is the speed of recovery. That’s the challenge.”

At least seven people in the Caribbean, including three in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic, have died in relation to the powerful storm. Hurricane Melissa is expected to hit Cuba later in the day on Tuesday and the Bahamas at some point before Wednesday (October 29) night.