175 MPH Winds Cat 5 Hurricane Melissa Making Her Slow Move Towards Jamaica! Power is Alredy Out in Many Places. Comparisons to Hurricane Maria and Concerns Similar Damage.
2 PM
Lowest pressure in Atlantic Basin at this time of year.
October 27, 1998 Mitch had such low pressure.
These two points I want to discuss were mentioned on Fox Weather concerning the very concerning Cat 5 Hurricane Melissa! Context is needed and the main comment I want to make is this is exactly the time of year we expect a dangerous, hurricane in the Caribbean.
Mountains.........stronger winds as you go up in elevation. Elevation also leads to mudslides and flashflooding as the water rushes downhill with trees, cars, people and everything in it's path as we so recently learned last year with Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina. People feel safer "higher up" but the higher up you go to get away from the storm surge, the stronger the winds may be felt and there are other dangers.
Beaches .......... are a no go as the storm surge will be most likely record high when Melissa finally moves towards Landfall and the water, the waves move out ahead of her trapping people who are in low lying area from being able to evacuate and then it's too late. And, often tho not always, they are part of the stastics of those who died in a wicked, Major Hurricane.
You need a sort of "sweet spot" where there's a safe structure not on the beach, but not too high up in the mountains. And, Jamaica has beautiful mountains. Shelters are open on the Island. Jamaica knows hurricanes. It's easy to say "Jamiaca doesn't know a Category 5" but you can say that any time a Cat 5 moves towards Landfall as most people have not lived through multiple Category 5s unless they are storm chasers such as @icyclone who has been through 5 Cat 5s! And when grandparents tell kids about "the big one" that brought tall the pine trees down or all the palm trees kids don't believe "old wives tales" and so generally most people have not lived through a Cat 5. So let's drop that narrative.
But Jamaica IS used to tropical weather, hurricanes and even recently Hurricane Beryl that almost made landfall and slid by offshore as a Category 4 Hurricane. Growing up in Miami I've had many friends from Jamaica (and Haiti) and we all compare hurricane stories and we are always reminded "but we have mountains" and they talk on how some family memeber's home slide down the mountain. Yes, mountains is something Miami does not have and yet we both have beautiful beaches and our paradise is punctuated by visits from Tropical Terrors known as Hurricanes.
The word itself "hurricane" comes from Hurricane has evolved through time from the word hurakan" which was a Taino word meaning wind, storm and fire and the emphasis on terrible, violent storms that sunk ships, washed away towns and terrorized the local people indigenous to that region and the new settlers who were lucky not to have ended up at the bottom of the sea being lost to a hurricane no one saw coming. Sailors saw signs of a storm, but they had no radar, no satellite imagery, no Mimic, no Hurricane Recon, no Hurricane Center to complain about when a storm moves too far West or doesn't intensify fast enough. The early Floridians who traded with the Seminoles who would come down the river to trade and do business were often on such friendly terms with the early pioneers in the Miami area that they came down multiple times to tell them a "big wind" was coming and to prepare. I'm 4th generation Floridan going back to 1800s so these stories are not wive's tales but true told to be my people I interviewed and knew as part of research on Miami History and Hurricane History.
Basically I am stalling, like Melissa, trying to avoid the reality that Melissa will be remembered for her death toll, her destruction and when I say destruction I say Maria sort of destruction as witnessed in Puerto Rico. Maria was a Cat 4 at landfall with devastating 155 MPH winds and gusts much higher. More a tornado in it's destruction that's your run of the mill strong hurricane. The infrastructure was destroyed and it took a long time to put it back together; even now the power is prone to go out faster from any storm and many left Puerto Rico for Miami and other places where life was "normal" and I know that feeling. After Andrew I just wanted "normal" and normal means street lights, stop lights that work, electricity, cable TV and the stores to have food in them again as they opened with very little there as the infrastructure of business was as broken as the power grid. Details too small to even talk on such as "stop signs" and trees picked up that out of town owners who came for the winter left rotting in the 90 degree August heat. It took two months for the city to pick up the debris that was piled high like a fortres on every street with furniture and rugs wet and moldy creating additional health issues for kids with asthma and I'll add people who lived in places without bulk pickup driving by looking for a pile and dumping their wet, moldy furniture in front of our house making the pile over 5 feet high and speeding away.
posted by BobbiStorm @ 11:01 AM
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