Hurricane Melissa live updates: Cuba bracing for impact as strong category 3 storm hits
LIVE UPDATES: Hurricane Melissa has now reached Cuba after ripping through Jamaica, triggering huge flash flooding.
Scroll down for the latest news and updates.
Key events
29 Oct 2025 - 10:49 AM
Ceiling collapses at major Jamaican airport
29 Oct 2025 - 10:44 AM
‘Devastating impacts’: Jamaican PM
29 Oct 2025 - 08:35 AM
Melissa downgraded as eyes turn to Cuba
29 Oct 2025 - 07:59 AM
‘Let’s hope there are none’: Minister says no deaths as of yet
29 Oct 2025 - 07:37 AM
More than half a million without power, tourists stranded
29 Oct 2025 - 05:17 AM
Mass evacuations underway in Cuba as Melissa approaches
29 Oct 2025 - 05:09 AM
Hospital roof torn off as ferocious winds hit
29 Oct 2025 - 05:06 AM
Flood water rising, roads crumble away
29 Oct 2025 - 05:03 AM
Horror video shows Melisaa's forceful fury
29 Oct 2025 - 04:02 AM
Hurricane Melissa ‘unlike anything people in Jamaica have seen before’
29 Oct 2025 - 03:58 AM
Hurricane Melissa makes landfall with 295km/h winds
Hurricane Melissa ‘unlike anything people in Jamaica have seen before’
Ahead of Hurricane Melissa’s “The destruction could be unlike anything people in Jamaica have seen before,” US forecaster AccuWeather’s hurricane expert Alex DaSilva said.
“The island has never taken a direct hit from a category four or a category five hurricane in recorded history.”
Melissa is the third most intense hurricane observed in the Caribbean after Wilma in 2005 and Gilbert in 1988, according to AccuWeather.
Gilbert was the last major storm to directly hit the island.
Hurricane Melissa makes landfall with 295km/h winds
Hurricane Melissa has made landfall in western Jamaica as a powerful category five storm and the strongest ever to directly hit the Caribbean country of 2.8 million people.
Melissa made landfall near the town of New Hope, 62km south of Montego Bay, packing maximum sustained winds of 295 km/h, the US National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory.
The slow-moving storm is forecast to remain a powerful hurricane as it crosses the mountainous island - whose highland communities are vulnerable to landslides and flooding - and heads towards Santiago de Cuba, Cuba’s second-largest city.
The Miami-based hurricane centre warned that “total structural failure” was likely in Melissa’s path.
