Hurricane Melissa is no more. In its 11 a.m. EDT Friday advisory, the National Hurricane Center declared Melissa post-tropical, ending its historic 10-day rampage. Melissa roared past Bermuda near midnight Thursday, passing about 130 miles (210 km) west of the island. At the time, Melissa was weakening from a Cat 2 with winds of 100 mph (160 km/h) to a Cat 1 with winds of 90 mph (145 km/h). Winds gusted to 69 mph at Bermuda’s L. F. Wade International Airport, and at elevated station at the National Museum of Bermuda clocked a 99 mph gust at an altitude of 115 ft. (35 m). As of early Friday, about half of Bermuda was without power, but no “major incidents” have been reported so far, according to a government update Friday morning.
Melissa passed near the southern tip of Long Island in the Bahamas near 5 p.m. EDT Oct. 29 as a Category 1 storm with 90 mph (145 km/h) winds and a central pressure of 974 mb. Earlier that day, at 3:10 a.m. EDT, Melissa made landfall in the eastern Cuban province of Santiago de Cuba, about 40 miles (65 km) west of Santiago de Cuba, as a Category 3 storm with winds of 120 mph (195 km/h) and a central pressure of 952 mb.
Melissa’s first landfall was in western Jamaica at 1 p.m. EDT Oct. 28, as a Category 5 storm with 185 mph (300 km/h) winds and a central pressure of 892 mb, tying with the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane in the Florida Keys as the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane on record.
Extratropical storm Melissa is expected to pass within 100 miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada, near midnight Friday, with sustained winds of 75-80 mph (120-130 km/h). Newfoundland will be on the weaker left side of Melissa’s center and will miss the storm’s strongest winds, but a flow of moist air in advance of the storm is likely to contribute to heavy rains of 1-3 inches (25-75 mm) over Atlantic Canada on Friday and Saturday, in combination with a separate storm.
The full scope of Melissa’s impact still unknown
After making landfall Oct. 28 as the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane on record, the full scope of Melissa’s impact on the Caribbean is still difficult to gauge. Melissa is being blamed for at least 60 deaths: 30 in Haiti (20 of them in Petit-Goâve, after a river flooded by Melissa burst its banks); four in the Dominican Republic; 22 in Jamaica (including three indirect deaths); and four in Panama. The areas hardest hit by the storm are largely still inaccessible, so the death toll can be expected to grow.
A potential analogue storm for Jamaica: the 1780 Savanna-la-Mar Hurricane
While Melissa is the worst hurricane to affect Jamaica since modern records began in 1851, there was a storm in 1780, though likely weaker, that followed a similar track (not the Great Hurricane of 1780, the deadliest hurricane in Atlantic history, which also hit the Caribbean in October). On Oct. 3, 1780, a severe hurricane moving from the south struck western Jamaica and destroyed the port city of Savanna-la-Mar. According to a write-up by NOAA and by hurricane scientist Dr. Kerry Emanuel in his excellent book, Divine Wind, as the hurricane approached Jamaica, many villagers were drawn to the shore to witness the heavy surf. They were engulfed in the quickly rising storm surge, estimated at 20 feet (6.5 m). The surge also wrecked ships anchored in the harbor and destroyed most of the buildings in town. In the port village of Lucea, 20 miles to the north, 400 people were killed and all but two buildings demolished. In Montego Bay on Jamaica’s north shore, 360 were killed. The hurricane headed north and hit eastern Cuba, sinking multiple British warships in Cuban waters while crippling many others. The storm’s death toll was around 3,000, including 1,500 sailors.
Divine Wind presents a graphic and moving account of the storm, written by the Anglican clergyman George Wilson Bridges:
The sea seemed mingled with the clouds, while the heaving swell of the earth, as it rolled beneath its bed, bore the raging floods over their natural boundaries, overwhelmed the coasts, and retreating with irresistible force, bore all before them. To the distance of half a mile, the waves carried and fixed vessels of no ordinary size, leaving them the providential means of sheltering the house-less inhabitant. Not a tree, or bush, or cane was to be seen: universal desolation prevailed, and the wretched victims of violated nature, who would obtain no such shelter, and who had not time to fly to the protecting rocks, were either crushed beneath the falling ruins, or swept away, and never heard from more. The shattered remains of houses, whose tenants were dead or dying, the maddening search for wives and children, who were lost — the terrific howling of the frightened negroes, as it mingled with the whistling but subsiding winds — and the deluged state of the earth, strewed with the wreck of nature, and ploughed into deep ravines, was the scene which daylight ushered in; and, as if to mock the misery it had caused, the morning sun was again bright and cheerful.
Please donate to Hurricane Melissa relief efforts
In the coming days, you’ll see a number of appeals for Hurricane Melissa relief; please consider donating to one. Some options include the Jamaica Red Cross, the Jamaican government’s official fundraiser, the Global Empowerment Missions’ Hurricane Melissa fund, the GlobalGiving Hurricane Melissa Relief Fund, and Water Mission.
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Great Job Jeff Masters and Bob Henson & the Team @ Yale Climate Connections Source link for sharing this story.
