cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/4556

“Category 6” hurricane with wind gusts up to 250 mph is set to bring flooding, landslides, and other life-threatening impacts.

Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday as a monstrous Category 5 storm as the island country braced for devastating impacts, humanitarian operations urgently mobilized, and experts voiced horror at the latest climate-fueled weather disaster.

“This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation,” the National Hurricane Center said in an update after the storm made landfall.

Early video footage posted to social media shows the storm—the most powerful to ever strike the island and the third-strongest to ever form in the Atlantic—wreaking havoc and destruction.

Anne-Claire Fontan, the World Meteorological Organization’s tropical cyclone specialist, told reporters that “a catastrophic situation is expected in Jamaica” and described the hurricane as “the storm of the century” for the island. Melissa’s landfall is expected to bring extreme flooding, landslides, and other life-threatening impacts.

Tens of thousands of Jamaicans lost power as the slow-moving storm approached the island, bringing torrential rain and maximum sustained winds of 185 mph, with gusts over 220 mph. Storms like Melissa are the reason scientists are pushing to formally add a Category 6 for hurricanes.

“Unimaginable violence is hiding in the very small and compact eyewall of Melissa,” said Greg Postel, hurricane specialist at The Weather Channel. “Nearly continuous lightning will accompany the tornadic wind speeds.”

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