re: Category 5 Hurricane Melissa - 185 mph, 892mb, Top 3 in Recorded History

The vegetation damage in the heart of Melissa's path is upper echelon stuff. You can't compare a storm there to a storm on the Gulf coast that has more pines and hardwoods. A lot of the trees down there are stripped bare, and there is even some debarking. That is significant tornado type vegetation damage, and areas with more trees look like tornado damage.

Those winds were legit.

James Spann posted (on Facebook) that he will give an update once he hears from Josh Morgerman. Josh is not one to overhype things. Must have been pretty rough if all that he posted below was happening at 'only' 962 mb.

If I remember correctly, he was pretty close to the landfall point.

(Facebook post text below)

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James Spann's Post
James Spann
20h
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Many have asked about Josh, who rode out Melissa on the west end of Jamaica. This was his last post.

10:25 am. Frightening power. Whiteout. Roofs tearing off. Gusts like bombs going off. Painful ears. Praise the Lord for solid concrete. 962 mb.


After a major hurricane it can be days before connectivity is restored; hopefully he is fine but just not able to get any messages out.

He has been through several category five hurricanes; this isn’t his first rodeo. When I hear from him I will post an update.

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Saw an interview with one of the owners of Traveller’s Resort in Negril this afternoon. If you love Negril and 7 mile beach, it took a beating, but not nearly the utter devastation that occurred further south that took the direct hit of the eye wall, it looks as if the proverbial finger of God destroyed everything. But he did say that the powdered sugar of a beach is gone and he never could imagine what the ocean looked like leading up to landfall.

The wife and I hit Jamerican status awhile back, 10+ trips, we first went to Negril in ‘97 on our honeymoon and fell in love with it. I’m including a link to the book of faces which has a ton of drone and emergency services footage shot today, it has an officially updated information page for when Sangster in MoBay is to be officially open for relief flights and when commercial service is expected to be resumed.


Facebook - Negril Hurricane updates & news

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Man, that looks like EF3/4 damage.

Saw that gif with the mesovertices earlier.

That shite is trippy if you think about all the physics, fluid dynamics, etc going into what you are looking at in that short video

Very cool video. Thanks.

That made me seasick but couldn't stop watching it

Only recently have I come to fear hurricanes more than tornadoes. Both are terrible if they affect population, but hurricanes are so much more widespread in a damage path. They can destroy a whole city, while the odds of a tornado hitting your location, even in prone areas, is much smaller, and wouldn’t destroy an entire large region

I fear Jamaica’s damage on that side of the island is something I don’t want to even fathom. Do we have a death toll?

Josh's Xweet for those who don't do Xwitter:

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Man. #Hurricane #MELISSA. Incredible power. Perhaps the mightiest hurricane of the 83 I've witnessed.

My location (Crawford, a tiny beach town in St. Elizabeth Parish #Jamaica) took the full force of the inner right eyewall and may have seen the peak winds in this historic, record-smashing hurricane.

First pic: as it started to get scary. Bone-rattling gusts were making roofs explode into clouds of lethal confetti. The grand palm tree out front was starting to bend obscenely—in a way I found unnatural.

Second pic: after we bolted the door shut because it was getting too dangerous even to watch the storm. (I'd randomly ended up in the hotel's kitchen with a local family.)

The hurricane's inner eyewall was a screaming white void. All I could see through the cracks in the shutters was the color white—accompanied by a constant, ear-splitting scream that actually caused pain. (Notice the woman in the pic holding her ears.) The scream occasionally got higher and angrier, and those extra-screechy screams made my eardrums pulse. Meanwhile, water was forcing in through every crack—under the floor and between the window slats.

I remember shuddering at the thought of what was happening to the town—what this screaming white void was doing to people, homes, communities.

My fears were well-founded. The impact in this part of coastal St. Elizabeth Parish is catastrophic. Wooden structures were completely mowed down and in some cases swept from their foundations. Some concrete structures collapsed. The well-built ones—like my hotel—survived, but even they had major roof, window, and door damage. The landscape has been stripped bare—the trees just sticks. The roads are blocked with rubble and utility poles.

Nearby Black River—a unique old historical town right on the water—was smashed beyond recognition: historical sites destroyed, main streets filled with rubble, the town market twisted like a pretzel, even the regional hospital destroyed.

It's a good thing I wasn't in my hotel room during the storm because one of the windows blew out, showering the bed with glass and wood. The hotel lost most of its roof, and several third-story rooms were smashed open. But in the lower flooors, those grand old concrete walls protected us. And so far I'm aware of only two deaths in Crawford—a fellow who had a heart attack at the school next door (his body was still in his car and unclaimed the next morning, a sad and disturbing sight), and a woman who drowned in the storm surge in Gallon Beach. While walking down the devastated streets of Black River, I ran into the Jamaican Member of Parliament for this region, @floydgreenja. He's a great dude and I appreciate that he already has a gameplan for turning this catastrophe into an opportunity—to build this region back better. And I vowed on the spot that I'm going to make it my mission to spread awareness of this catastrophe and get that aid flowing in. I'll be talking about MELISSA a lot over the coming months—because it is both a fascinating meteorological event and a human disaster that demands an international response. (And I swear an epic video is coming out of this.)

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Do we have a death toll?

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Looks like 32 as of now but only 8 in Jamaica. Haiti had 23 deaths in river flooding.