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The water is about the same but shear will be gradually increasing.

BAM Wx is the dregs man

It’s moving almost due North, right along 78W. It should be back over water in 2-3 hours. It’s a much shorter trip than if it was moving more Northeasterly. It also will keep it over water longer before reaching Cuba.

The only reason the damage was bad for Helene was because so many communities built in the floodplain of the creeks and rivers.

What are the water temps between Jamaica and Cuba? That will play a factor. If they are just as warm I would think it would have to strengthen some.

Like an angry hornet and Jamaica just stepped on it's nest

Yeah I wonder if Melissa will be able to regroup once it gets back over water. I know that wind shear is going to become a factor too.

That’s the thing, in the video he said that in fact homes in jamaica are often built a good bit above the river anyway. The threat (according to him) is moreso landslides/rockslides caused by huge amounts of rain falling on crumbling and steep terrain, rather than houses getting swept away by the water itself.

Satellite estimates say 160,161 knot winds when it made landfall

Right, but probably a bit cooler.

It seems like intensification was reinvigorated when it began moving a bit more readily, so upwelling may have slowed the rate a bit for a spell.

Holy shit! The video of the eye over land is going to be wild. I'm afraid the whole western side of the island is going to be flattened. What a humbling display of power by mother nature.

True enough - I wasn't really addressing landslides, just flooding water volume. In that respect yeah - the landslides will certainly be worse. River flow is a direct function of land area X rainfall rate/level right? While the normal flow might be higher on a per-land-area-served basis; presumably that's due to Jamaica getting more rain during normal periods than NC; given an equal amount of heavy rainfall though they both would flow the same of course. That said - one key difference here may simply be the very *fast* dumping of rain in certain areas; moreso than Helene where the rate of rainfall wasn't as fast as Melissa. So tributaries will probably be worse-off for short periods than Helene. FWIW - I've driven through a lot of the Helene areas. While the damage was really bad; it wasn't "wipe large areas off the map" bad. The bad thing about Helene was that the damage was spread over a *huge* area - like several dozen Jamaicas.

This is what happens, especially when you consider the high terrain. But, the Northeastern portion of the eye wall is already more than halfway across.

so after melissa is the season done?

It slowed down quite a bit at landfall.

not only was the water temps 30c but the water is warm and deep in the part of the caribbean..

yeah the warm water was alot deeper in this region something like 600 feet down

been very blustery and chilly for days now feels like late november..almost tempted to wear a coat..

What is really weird is the fact that she sat in basically the same spot for days and still strengthened. Usually the upwelling of colder water will hinder strengthening to some extent. Evidently there was so much warmer water in this area it didn't happen?

practically speaking it's all horizontal. Tornadoes loft debris tens of thousands of feet in the air, a hurricane doesn't loft debris any appreciable amount, event light stuff. You can step out into 150 mph winds from a hurricane and most likely be fine, you do that during an EF3 and you're dead.

That dry slot will suck.

watching the weather channel as melissa was making landfall a recorded gust less then 900 feet up was over 250 mph jamaica is a very hilly country..