Tropical Storm Melissa started to strengthen on Friday afternoon as it meandered over the Caribbean Sea southeast of Jamaica.\u00a0 At 12:30 p.m. EDT on Friday the center of Tropical Storm Melissa was located at latitude 15.6\u00b0N and longitude 74.5\u00b0W which put the center about 220 miles (355 km) southeast of Kingston, Jamaica.\u00a0 Melissa was moving toward the east-southeast at 2 m.p.h. (3 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 60 m.p.h. (95 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 75 m.p.h. (120 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 999 mb.<\/p>\n
A Hurricane Watch is in effect for Jamaica.<\/span><\/p>\n A Hurricane Watch is also in effect for the southern coast of Haiti from the border with the Dominican Republic to Port Au Prince.<\/span><\/p>\n A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Jamaica.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the southern coast of Haiti from the border with the Dominican Republic to Port Au Prince.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n A U.S. Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft determined that Tropical Storm Melissa had started to strengthen early on Friday afternoon.\u00a0 The reconnaissance plane found stronger winds and a decreasing surface pressure in Tropical Storm Melissa.<\/p>\n Tropical Storm Melissa also looked like a stronger tropical storm on satellite images.\u00a0 Stronger thunderstorms developed near the center of Melissa’s circulation.\u00a0 Stronger thunderstorms also formed in bands in the eastern side of Tropical Storm Melissa.\u00a0 Bands in the western side of Melissa’s circulation still consisted primarily of showers and lower clouds.\u00a0 Storms near the center of Melissa generated more upper level divergence that pumped mass away to the east of the tropical storm.\u00a0 The removal of mass caused the surface pressure to decrease.<\/p>\n Even though Tropical Storm Melissa started to strengthen on Friday afternoon, the strongest winds were still occurring in the eastern side of Melissa’s circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out 140 miles (225 km) in the eastern half of Tropical Storm Melissa.\u00a0 The winds in the western half of Melissa’s circulation were blowing at less than tropical storm force.<\/p>\n Tropical Storm Melissa will move through an environment that will be favorable for intensification during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 Melissa will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperatures are near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 It will move under the south part of an upper level trough that is north of Hispaniola.\u00a0 The upper level trough will produce southwesterly winds that will blow toward the top of Melissa\u2019s circulation.\u00a0 Those winds will produce some vertical wind shear, but the winds will get weaker during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 The vertical wind shear will inhibit intensification, but the wind shear will not be enough to prevent intensification.\u00a0 Tropical Storm Melissa will intensify during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 Melissa could intensify rapidly at times.\u00a0 Tropical Storm Melissa is likely to strengthen to a hurricane by Saturday afternoon.\u00a0 Melissa could intensify to a major hurricane by Sunday.<\/p>\n Tropical Storm Melissa will move around the western end of a high pressure system that is over the Atlantic Ocean.\u00a0 The high pressure system will steer Melissa slowly toward the north-northwest during the next 24 hours. On its anticipated track, Tropical Storm Melissa will move slowly toward Jamaica.<\/p>\n Tropical Storm Melissa is likely to drop very heavy rain on Jamaica, Haiti and parts of the Dominican Republic.\u00a0 Very heavy rain is likely to cause catastrophic floods in some locations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tropical Storm Melissa started to strengthen on Friday afternoon as it meandered over the Caribbean Sea southeast of Jamaica.\u00a0 At 12:30 p.m. EDT on Friday the center of Tropical Storm Melissa was located at latitude 15.6\u00b0N and longitude 74.5\u00b0W which put the center about 220 miles (355 km) southeast of Kingston, Jamaica.\u00a0 Melissa was moving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[528,527,144,26,25,448,2323,1733,2604,1741],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23439,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23438\/revisions\/23439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}