Scientist explains rapid intensification as Hurricane Melissa nears Jamaica

WCCO-AM / 830 WCCO

Hurricane Melissa strengthened Tuesday as it crawled toward Jamaica, where officials and residents braced for catastrophic winds, flash flooding and landslides.

Transcript

01:00This has been a rapid intensification hurricane.

01:13So it developed as a tropical storm in the Caribbean Sea and then it's tracked across

01:20the basin over the last few days, I think.

01:24And then what happened was it picked up a lot of energy from warmer sea surface temperatures

01:31and developed into a storm system.

01:34We call this a rapid intensification hurricane because of how fast the wind speeds developed

01:40over a really short period.

01:42And also we can see this because of how slow the storm is moving.

01:46So the wind speeds are topping 175 miles per hour.

01:51It's also the strongest storm that we've seen globally this year.

01:55So it's of massive concern, but it's slightly different dynamics to a normal hurricane in

02:02the fact that it's picked up all of this energy from warmer sea surface temperatures and then

02:08is releasing this energy in higher wind speeds and also intense rainfall.

02:13So it's all.

02:14So.

02:15So.

02:16So.

02:17So.

02:18So.

02:19So.

02:20So.

02:21So.

02:23So.

02:24So.

02:25So.

02:27I don't know.

02:57I think they are very well prepared. I think that the issue potentially was how soon they

03:06had to put this in place. So it was very quickly that this storm intensified and therefore

03:13the early warning window for these countries was very small in the matter of two days,

03:20I think, because usually with these storms, what you'd expect is that it would veer north

03:25of Jamaica. And so it's very rare for it to track directly across Jamaica. So that might

03:32have caused an issue as well. But they are doing everything they can to prepare people

03:37for the storm issuing evacuations, they ve got all of the aid that they can available to

03:43issue to people after the storm. And I think they re doing everything they really can to

03:50prepare for such a big storm, such a drastically impactful form hitting the very centre of

03:57that country.

04:04living seeing some quite like the sea ko, and eachemi McAle deer is very good enough to

04:13look back at Natural Issues which is for about 70 Lastly, he's

04:14just walking attention to theWow.f estimateoperления over there and therein sea is going on and

04:19Valerie, she is looking at the spot,augment着, almost legs and?

04:22So you wanna know now, you know, what? You know, how it is going to be avoided eventually?

04:24After thatReveys is just понятно, you know, what you want to run out the world, different

04:29sessions that they come to. You may not expect any time to run through the war program that

04:32Let's go.

05:02We're increasingly seeing these rapid intensification storms. It's not just the case in the Caribbean

05:12Sea or the Atlantic. We usually see them in sort of the Pacific or Indian Ocean sort

05:19of region of cyclones and typhoons around Christmas time, actually. And so it's actually

05:24quite unusual to see the same dynamic in the Caribbean Sea. This is more likely with climate

05:30change and therefore we should be concerned because all of these regions where we see

05:34hurricanes are more likely to see these sort of storms in the future. It also could be possible

05:41that we could get even more intense storms and that should be something that we're thinking about

05:46preparing communities for. This is the strongest storm this year but in the future it could be

05:52one of a number of storms of this strength that we see within a year and that's really concerning.

06:00So

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