Jamaica braces for its strongest recorded hurricane

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Hurricane Melissa which is slowly moving towards Jamaica. The category five storm is expected to bring catastrophic flooding and landslides, with experts warning an urgent humanitarian crisis could follow. Senior meteorologist with AccuWeather Bob Larson explains what makes this hurricane particularly dangerous.

Transcript

00:00Not only is it very intense at Category 5, which is at the top end of the hurricane scale,

00:07but also some very slow moving.

00:09It's a very intense storm that's moving very slowly.

00:12How slowly?

00:13Only at about 5 kilometers per hour, essentially a walking pace.

00:17Typically, we'll find hurricanes or tropical storms through this part of the Caribbean

00:20moving 5, maybe 10 times faster than that.

00:23So not only devastating conditions, but for a prolonged period of time,

00:27and that certainly raises the concern above and beyond the already very dangerous Category 5 hurricane Melissa.

00:34Jamaica is set to be hit particularly hard by this.

00:38When are we expecting those effects to be really felt and what's happening there at the moment?

00:44It's been raining in Jamaica since actually this weekend,

00:46but they have not experienced much in the way of wind until the past 12 hours or so.

00:51Conditions continue to deteriorate pretty quickly across the island

00:55and we expect Melissa to make a landfall west of Kingston, Jamaica,

00:59sometime Tuesday morning, Jamaican time, maybe about 15 hours or so from now.

01:05Kingston, the capital, it's very low-lying.

01:08What does that mean in the case of this slow-moving, intense system?

01:13Well, as much as 60 to 90 centimeters of rain can fall over that area.

01:17And keep in mind, there's hilly terrain not too far north of there,

01:22and that can all just fall downstream and into the low-lying area.

01:25So we're a double concern.

01:26Not only the rain, but also the extensive wind.

01:29Wind gusts can reach 160 to 190 kilometers per hour there,

01:34if not even a little bit stronger.

01:35We're factoring some of the gusts.

01:36So it's a double-pronged concern,

01:40not to mention the slow movement of this,

01:42which is going to prolong the agony, unfortunately.

01:44Yeah, and I understand, you know,

01:46no areas of Jamaica will escape the effects of this.

01:49What about the higher elevations there?

01:52What effect will they get from these extremely strong winds?

01:56Yes, the high elevations will probably wind up with the worst of the rain

01:58in terms of total amounts and also the strongest wind gusts.

02:02There could be wind gusts closer to 200 kilometers per hour

02:05over the higher terrain

02:06before Melissa slowly advances northward

02:09later Tuesday night and then into Wednesday.

02:11Next in line would be southeastern Cuba,

02:13probably losing some of its intensity by the time it gets there,

02:17more likely to be a Category 3

02:19by the time it gets there late Tuesday night

02:21or early Wednesday morning local time.

02:24And how does this storm compare

02:26or likely will compare to others that we've seen in the region?

02:29Well, the one thing that stands out, aside from the intensity,

02:32is the fact that it's moving so slowly.

02:34Doing some research and checking,

02:36this is amongst the slowest tropical systems

02:38that have moved through this part of the world since 1971.

02:41Very unusual to have something like this move so very slowly.

02:44Of course, the intensity speaks for itself

02:46with it being a Category 5 at the top end

02:48of the Stafford-Simpson scale.

02:51Bob Larson, Senior Meteorologist with AccuWeather,

02:53thank you so much for the update on that.

02:55Thank you for having me.

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