AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Hurricane Melissa is hitting Jamaica as a dangerous Category 5 storm. Storms are nothing new to the Caribbean nation, but it is the first time a storm of this magnitude has struck the island. Here's the minister of science, energy, telecommunications and transport in Jamaica, Daryl Vaz.
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DARYL VAZ: Morning.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Morning.
VAZ: I am moving away from saying good morning.
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VAZ: And from now until whenever we recover, I will just say, Almighty Father, spare us.
CHANG: NPR's Rebecca Hersher has been covering this and joins us now. Hi, Becky.
REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE: Hi.
CHANG: OK, so just how dangerous of a situation could Jamaica be in with a storm of this magnitude?
HERSHER: I mean, it's extremely dangerous. So hurricanes are graded on a scale from 1 to 5. The higher the number, the more powerful the wind.
CHANG: Right.
HERSHER: So as a Category 5 hurricane, Melissa has winds strong enough to knock down basically any building that's made out of wood. This is wind that will rip off most roofs. It'll bring down large trees and power lines. So just from a wind perspective, it's a really scary storm.
CHANG: It could be utterly devastating. What else do we know about this storm?
HERSHER: Well, it's packing a lot of storm surge and rain. And honestly, those water hazards are at least as scary as the wind, if not more so. Here's what we know. We're expecting 10 feet of storm surge or more in some parts of Jamaica.
CHANG: Wow.
HERSHER: And the storm is moving really, really slowly. Like, it's crawling over the water of the Caribbean, and it's not going to speed up as it hits land, so it will linger over Jamaica, dumping huge amounts of rain. And I just - I can't overstate how much rain we're talking about here, Ailsa. Melissa is expected to bring multiple feet of rain to some parts of Jamaica. That is way more water than the ground can absorb. It will cause massive flooding, and that flooding will be particularly dangerous because of the mountains on the island.
CHANG: Wait, why is that? Explain how mountains make flooding worse, potentially.
HERSHER: So when a lot of rain falls on mountains, the water, it picks up speed as it flows downhill. So, you know, it falls all over Jamaica. You can imagine that could cause deadly flash flooding, and it only takes a few inches of swift-moving water to carry away people, to carry away cars. Even buildings can be swept away.
CHANG: Yeah.
HERSHER: We saw that here in the U.S. just last year when Hurricane Helene dumped rain on mountainous areas in the Southeast. So it's a very, very dangerous situation.
CHANG: Well, as we said, this is the first time ever that a Category 5 hurricane has hit Jamaica. Becky, why do you think this is happening now, specifically?
HERSHER: It's just really bad luck. You know, hurricanes happen every year in the Caribbean. Jamaica has obviously been hit by lots of storms over the years. This is just the first time a storm of this magnitude has hit the island head-on since modern records began. But storms like this one are getting more likely. You know, climate change makes large, powerful storms more common. It also makes very rainy storms more likely. So if you live in the Caribbean - you know, hurricane central - you are more and more likely over the years to find yourself staring down a really scary hurricane like Melissa at some point in your life.
CHANG: That is NPR's Rebecca Hersher. Thank you, Becky.
HERSHER: Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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