HAVANA / KINGSTON — Hurricane Melissa barreled north of Cuba on Wednesday after battering Jamaica and Haiti, leaving a trail of destruction across the Caribbean and isolating hundreds of communities in its wake.
The monster storm — one of the most powerful ever recorded in the region — struck Jamaica as a Category 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 185 mph (298 kph) before weakening slightly to a Category 3 as it tore across Cuba’s eastern provinces, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
By Wednesday afternoon, Melissa had been downgraded to a Category 2 storm, but it continued to pose a serious threat to the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos with high winds, torrential rain, and life-threatening storm surges.
“Life-threatening storm surge, flash flooding and landslides, and damaging winds are ongoing this afternoon,” the NHC warned.
In eastern Cuba, authorities reported extensive damage after Melissa tore through Santiago de Cuba, the nation’s second-largest city, and surrounding provinces.
At least 241 communities were left isolated and without communication, affecting an estimated 140,000 people, according to early local reports.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that while the worst had passed, the country faced “a massive recovery effort” and warned citizens to remain alert as heavy rains persisted.
Authorities evacuated more than 735,000 residents ahead of the storm’s arrival, with most remaining in emergency shelters. Power was preemptively shut down across eastern provinces, while entire villages in Guama and Guantánamo were submerged by flooding.
“Many homes have lost their roofs, trees are down everywhere, and roads are impassable,” said one local official in Santiago.
The storm’s impact comes as Cuba faces ongoing food, fuel, and medicine shortages, worsening a humanitarian crisis that has already triggered mass emigration since 2021. Díaz-Canel announced the deployment of 2,500 electrical line workers to begin restoring power and infrastructure.
Jamaica bore the brunt of Melissa’s fury when it made landfall as a record-breaking Category 5 storm, the strongest ever to hit the island directly.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness described the devastation as “unprecedented,” with widespread damage to homes, hospitals, and infrastructure.
“Our country has been ravaged by Hurricane Melissa, but we will rebuild—and we will do so even better than before,” Holness vowed.
More than 77% of the island was left without electricity, and St. Elizabeth parish in the southwest remained underwater. Kingston, spared the worst of the storm, was expected to reopen its main airport on Thursday.
“It was like a freight train trying to come to a stop for eight hours,” said Journie Ealey, a U.S. tourist stranded in Montego Bay. “I’ve never experienced anything like this before.”
In neighboring Haiti, Melissa’s torrential rains triggered catastrophic flooding and landslides. Local officials in Petit-Goâve reported at least 25 deaths after a river overflowed its banks, according to the Associated Press.
Across the island, at least four additional deaths were confirmed as authorities warned that more flooding was expected through Thursday.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Washington was prepared to assist Jamaica’s recovery, while the U.S. State Department announced the deployment of search-and-rescue teams to affected Caribbean nations.
Meteorologists at AccuWeather ranked Melissa as the third-most intense hurricane ever observed in the Caribbean, trailing only Wilma (2005) and Gilbert (1988) — the latter also having made landfall in Jamaica.
Scientists have warned that warming ocean temperatures, fueled by greenhouse gas emissions, are intensifying storms more rapidly and frequently. Caribbean leaders have renewed calls for climate reparations and debt relief to help small island nations rebuild from increasingly severe disasters.
As the storm moves north toward the Bahamas, regional authorities are urging continued vigilance. Recovery efforts across Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba are expected to take weeks, if not months, as the Caribbean counts the cost of yet another climate-fueled catastrophe.
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