Hurricane Melissa to bring high winds, heavy rain to Eastern Canada Friday: forecaster

AccuWeather’s Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva on the latest movements of Hurricane Melissa as it is expected to pass the Maritimes with 60 to 80 kms winds.

As Hurricane Melissa makes its way northeast from the Caribbean, a forecaster says residents in Atlantic Canada should prepare for strong winds and heavy rain later this week.

“The storm should pass just west of Bermuda before heading up towards Eastern Canada,” Alex DaSilva, lead hurricane forecaster at AccuWeather, told CTV News in an interview Wednesday morning.

“The storm is probably going to pass west of Bermuda and then make a very close pass to Newfoundland sometime Friday evening or Friday night.”

Melissa was making its way across Cuba on Wednesday as a Category 2 storm, after it made landfall in Jamaica as a Category 5 a day earlier, causing extensive damage and leaving at least one person dead in the island nation.

Flooding from the storm also left 25 people dead in Haiti after a river near the coastal town of Petit-Goâve burst its banks and flooded nearby homes, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.

Although Melissa has lost some of its intensity in terms of wind speeds, it continues to dump hundreds of centimetres of rain on Cuba as it heads toward the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands, DaSilva said.

“We’re still seeing a lot of rain right now across portions of eastern Cuba. There’s been some reports of around 100 centimetres of rain in some of the mountainous terrain areas in Jamaica and eastern Cuba, so lots and lots and lots of rain,” he said.

“Mudslides have been an issue as well, so, we just have to wait a little while to get the scope of the damage. … I think throughout the day today and in the next few days, we’re going to get some pretty rough pictures from a lot of these areas going forward.”

DaSilva said that as the storm moves north, it is expected to accelerate, which is good news for the areas in its path. Melissa had been moving at a “crawling pace” over the last few days, he said, allowing the severe storm conditions to linger in the same place for longer periods of time.

People in Eastern Canada, particularly those on the eastern coast of Newfoundland, should prepare for winds between 60 and 80 kilometres per hour, as well as 25-50 millimetres of rain, DaSilva warned, as Melissa passes Canada on its way to the cold, open waters of the North Atlantic.