Overview
- Jamaica confirms 19 fatalities after the Category 5 landfall, with more than 70% of customers still without power and 134 roads blocked.
- Haiti reports 31 dead and 21 missing, thousands in shelters, over 1,046 homes flooded, and major agricultural losses that are slowing recovery.
- Cuban authorities say about 735,000 people were evacuated in the east and report rescues of 29 people isolated by floodwaters.
- The National Hurricane Center says Melissa is now a large post-tropical cyclone moving northeast, sending dangerous swells toward the U.S. Northeast and Atlantic Canada and brushing Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula with gusts and heavy rain.
- Analyses cite the storm’s Jamaica landfall as the most powerful in roughly 90 years with winds near 300 km/h, and climate officials link its unusual intensity to human-driven warming.