Hurricane Melissa slams Cuba; Jamaica declared 'disaster area'

Alex Harris, Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald on Oct 29, 2025

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After ravaging Jamaica most of Tuesday, Hurricane Melissa made its second landfall around 3 a.m. in Cuba as a Category 3 hurricane.

The National Hurricane Center said Melissa came ashore in Santiago de Cuba with 120 mph winds, marking the strongest storm to make landfall in Cuba since Hurricane Irma in 2017. It’s expected to bring up to 20 inches of flooding rain, high winds and up to 12 feet of storm surge throughout Wednesday.

In Jamaica, Prime Minister Andrew Holness issued a disaster declaration not long after Melissa’s record-breaking strike. The death and damage toll remained uncertain early Wednesday.

Video posted on social media showed Hurricane Melissa’s winds peeling the roof off one hospital building near the eye wall and sending it flying. At a press conference, Desmond McKenzie, minister of local government in Jamaica, reported that multiple hospitals had damaged roofs, were without power and hit by storm surge.

At one hospital, 75 patients had to be evacuated. “Blocked roads right across the country,” he said. “Almost every parish is experiencing blocked roads, galled trees, utility poles and excess offing in many communities.” He said St. Elizabeth Parish — the island’s most important agricultural area — was “underwater.”

But unlike the smash hit to Jamaica, Melissa’s Cuba landfall involves a weaker — and more importantly, much faster moving — Melissa.

As of 8 a.m., Melissa was down to 105 mph maximum sustained winds, a Category 2, and was moving over Cuba at 14 mph. That’s a great deal faster than the 5 mph pace Melissa approached Jamaica or the 8 mph pace it crossed the island.

It was about 45 miles northwest of Guantanamo, Cuba and hammering the island, which has an ailing power grid and is still recovering from years of back-to-back storm hits.

At this speed, forecasters said, Melissa should be clear of Cuba’s northern coast in another few hours. Then it will gear up for its third predicted landfall over the central and southern Bahamas later Wednesday evening.

There, Melissa is expected to strike as a Category 2, with the eye potentially coming ashore near Crooked Island or Long Island. It could bring another 5 to 10 inches of rain, hurricane-force winds and 5 to 8 feet of storm surge.

The neighboring Turks and Caicos could also see up to 4 feet of storm surge, some rain and high winds from the outskirts of Melissa.

Meanwhile, this marks more than a week of continuous heavy rain for Haiti from Melissa’s outer bands. The storm has already claimed at least four lives in Haiti, and the rain is expected to continue at least another day.

For its final act, Melissa is expected to cross west of Bermuda on Friday as a hurricane. The storm hardy island could feel some of the storm’s outer bands.

While the impacts of Melissa are still occurring, recovery is expected to be a greater challenge than usual this year with the dissolution of US AID. So far, the U.S. has not signaled how it plans to help the storm ravaged Caribbean, and many of the usual staff and departments who have done so in the past have been laid off or dissolved.