Hurricane Melissa tore a path of destruction across Jamaica.
Hurricane Melissa tore a path of destruction across Jamaica after the storm made landfall on Tuesday as a Category 5 hurricane, one of the most powerful landfalls on record in the Atlantic basin.
After lashing Jamaica with dangerous winds and flooding rain, Melissa made a second landfall in Cuba as a Category 3 hurricane on Wednesday morning. Melissa then moved through the Bahamas, and next, on Thursday night, the storm will pass Bermuda as a Category 1 or 2 hurricane.
Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Cuba early Wednesday morning as a Category 3 storm, the National Hurricane Center confirmed in a bulletin.
The NHC said the storm remains "extremely dangerous" with maximum sustained winds near 120 mph.
Melissa made landfall in the province of Santiago de Cuba near the city of Chivirico, the NHC said.
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness said his nation had been "ravaged" by the passage of Hurricane Melissa on Tuesday, but said the country "will rebuild and we will do so even better than before."
"Tonight I encourage Jamaicans to be hopeful," Holness wrote in a post to X, sharing a video clip of an interview broadcast on CNN.
"I know many, especially those in the worst affected parishes, are feeling disheartened," he said. "Your homes may have been damaged or destroyed and your communities and towns no longer look the same."
"I know your pain and I feel your loss," Holness said. "We are mobilizing quickly to start the relief and recovery efforts and we will be there with you every step of the way."
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that his administration was "prepared to move" on sending humanitarian aid to Jamaica, amid the devastation wrought there by Hurricane Melissa.
"On a humanitarian basis, we have to," Trump told reporters while on his trip to Asia. "We're watching it closely, and we're prepared to move, but you know, it's doing tremendous damages as we speak."
"I've never seen, I guess, it can get that high, but I've never seen it," Trump added. "And it's literally just, you know, knocking down everything in front of it. It's, it's a stage five, I guess. And you don't see stage five, you don't see five, you see fours and threes. But this is a five early on, meaning it gets worse."
-ABC News' Lalee Ibssa
Hurricane Melissa has restrengthened into a Category 4 storm as it approaches eastern Cuba -- with maximum winds of 130 mph.
Melissa is expected to make its second landfall on Cuba as an extremely dangerous major hurricane in the next few hours.
As it pulls away from Jamaica, the hurricane warning there has been downgraded to a tropical storm warning.
