(NEXSTAR) — Hurricane Melissa has become one of the strongest Atlantic storms on record, reaching the rare strength of Category 5 on Monday.
The “extremely dangerous” storm has its sights on Jamaica as of Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center said. As of 1 p.m. ET, the NHC said Melissa had made landfall in New Hope, Jamaica, with 185 mph winds.
The NHC said Melissa is moving at about 9 mph toward the north-northeast as of early Tuesday afternoon. It’s slow speed it expected to keep it over Jamaica through the day before Melissa moves toward southeastern Cuba Wednesday morning.
“Can’t remember a storm moving this slowly for this long,” Rebecca Barry, a meteorologist at Nexstar’s WFLA, remarked Tuesday during a broadcast of “Tracking the Tropics.” Winds are so strong, according to Barry, that it’s like a tornado, “but it’s lasting for over a day because it’s moving so slowly.”
“There is no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a Category 5,” Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said. “The question now is the speed of recovery. That’s the challenge.”
Massive wind damage is expected in Melissa’s core and Jamaica’s highest mountains could see gusts of up to 200 mph, said Michael Brennan, director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.
“It’s going to be a very dangerous scenario,” he said, warning that there would be “total building failures.”
Melissa is the fifth most intense Atlantic basin hurricane on record by pressure and the strongest to make landfall since Hurricane Dorian in 2019, according to hurricane specialist and storm surge expert Michael Lowry.
With as close as Jamaica and Cuba are to the U.S. — Havana, Cuba, is just over 100 miles away from Key West, Florida — it’s difficult not to wonder whether Melissa will impact the U.S.
Thankfully, current forecasting suggests that isn’t the case.
The latest experimental cone from the NHC shows Melissa is expected to move through Jamaica, Cuba, and the Bahamas, then travel northward through the Atlantic without reaching the East Coast.
It’s the poor weather those along the East Coast are experiencing Tuesday that’s helping to keep Melissa away, according to Wes Hohenstein, the chief meteorologist for Nexstar’s WNCN. The region is reporting cool temperatures with breezy conditions and rain in some areas.
“A lot of us are complaining on the East Coast today because we’ve got horrible weather, but it’s that horrible weather, jet stream dip that’s keeping the system away from the United States,” Hohenstein explained during “Tracking the Tropics.”
Only one storm, Chantal, has reached the U.S. this Atlantic hurricane season.
The tropical storm brought severe weather to South Carolina, North Carolina, and into Virginia after making landfall in early July. Others in the northeast also saw the impacts of Chantal.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.