An extremely powerful hurricane is lashing Jamaica, bringing “catastrophic winds, flash floods and storm surges.” The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) has issued an urgent warning for residents to stay in their shelters and take unusual precautions.
The storm made landfall on Tuesday and official warnings remain in place more than two hours after it struck. According to the latest reports, the center of the hurricane has moved to the northern coast of the island, near the famous tourist resort of Montego Bay.
Although the maximum wind speed has decreased slightly from the original almost 300 km/h to a still extreme 260 km/h, the danger remains. It is the strongest storm in the world in 2025.
Mattress and helmet as protection
In its warning, the NHC urges people to continue to take shelter and protect themselves from falling trees. He recommends that people stay in rooms that have as many walls as possible between them and the outside environment.
The warning also includes unusual advice: “For additional protection, you can cover yourself with a mattress and wear a helmet,” according to the NHC.
Authorities continue to monitor the situation and urge residents to follow all safety instructions.
Some people refused to evacuate
“I’m on my knees and I’m praying,” AP quoted Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness as saying. He urged residents to take the threat seriously, but according to AP, some people refused to evacuate from coastal areas. In Jamaica, up to 1,000 millimeters of rain could fall in some areas, and up to four-meter waves could hit the coast, meteorologists reported.
Emergency shelters are available in Jamaica for people who are in danger.
Hurricanes are among the most destructive natural phenomena. Even if the storm approaches and hits with full force, there may be a moment of apparent calm – when the area finds itself in the so-called the eye of the hurricane. However, this silence is extremely dangerous and can provide a false sense of security.
The eye of a hurricane, like the current Melissa over Jamaica, is only a temporary “pause” before the second wave of destruction.
On Monday, the US Air Force crew known as Hurricane Hunters flew through the eye of Hurricane Melissa:
What is the eye of a hurricane?
A hurricane, like other tropical cyclones, consists of three main parts: the outer rain bands, the eye, and the eye wall. Air in a hurricane rotates counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and rises. In the very center of the storm, however, the air, on the contrary, descends.
It is this descending air that creates the eye of a hurricane – an area of relative calm with moderate winds and, as can be seen in satellite images, often cloudless. Special planes even fly into the eye, the so-called hurricane hunters to collect data on wind speed and atmospheric conditions right in the center of the storm.
The eyewall is located around the resting eye. It is formed by a ring of high storm clouds with rapidly rising air. It is in the eye wall that the strongest winds of the entire hurricane are located.
When the eye passes over a certain area, a temporary stillness occurs. However, this can be treacherous because after the eye comes another part of the eye wall with the same destructive force, only with the wind blowing from the opposite direction. Interestingly, migrating birds can sometimes become trapped in the relatively calm eye of a hurricane.
Even before the land hit, the authorities recorded landslides and fallen trees. Heavy flooding was also expected:
According to estimates by the Red Cross, the storm could directly affect about 1.5 million inhabitants, which is half the population of the island nation. The government tried to prepare for the storm and urged residents to act with maximum caution. But Jamaican authorities admit that local infrastructure is often too flimsy to successfully withstand a hurricane as powerful as Melissa.
Melissa has already killed three people in Haiti and Jamaica and one person in the Dominican Republic.
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness warned on Monday evening that a hurricane could devastate the west of the island. In an interview with CNN, the Prime Minister of Jamaica expressed concern about whether the country’s infrastructure can withstand such an extremely powerful hurricane.
Already today, hundreds of thousands of people in Jamaica were without power and streets in the capital Kingston were empty, the agencies said.
The hurricane could head from Jamaica to Cuba and then to the Bahamas.
