Forecasters Worred Tropical Storm Melissa Could Turn Into Catastrophic Caribbean Hurricane

Satellite view of Tropical Storm Melissa starting
to get its act together over the Caribbean today. 

When we last checked in on Tropical Storm Melissa in the central Caribbean Sea two days ago, it was a fairly weak and disorganized mess with a highly uncertain future. 

Today, Melissa is still a weak system, still in the central Caribbean, still rather disorganized and still facing an uncertain future. In fact, winds with Melissa were just 45 mph, a bit less than they were on Tuesday. 

So no news, right?

Oh, but there is news, and it's ominous. 

Here's the deal:

Strong winds aloft have been keeping Melissa in check, blowing apart the thunderstorms Melissa needs to sustain itself and grow. 

Those winds are weakening, and as of late morning, Melissa was showing signs of the monster it might well become.

Thunderstorms started erupting on the storm's west side, not just to the east. Also, some of Melissa's clouds were showing curved, banded shapes. These are signs those strong upper level winds are starting to subside.  Meteorologists believe those upper level winds will continue to die down. 

Tropical Storm Melissa is sitting over record warm Caribbean Sea waters. That makes Melissa a ticking time bomb, ready to go off.  

The question is, where will the bomb go off? 

The official forecast as Melissa slowly growing stronger later today into early Saturday, then really going off to the races to become a major hurricane. A few computer models have it going to Category 5, which would mean top sustained winds of at least 160 mph. 

For now, the National Hurricane Center isn't going that far. But they do have official forecast has Melissa with top sustained winds at 130 by Sunday.

Where Melissa will go is still super hard to figure out. Much harder than usual for a hurricane. There's a complex dance of other weather systems far to its north that will control where it goes. 

This time of year, almost every time a storm goes by to the north, it will try to "pick up" a tropical storm and fling it northward through the Atlantic.  Not every storm can "reach" a Caribbean hurricane. In those cases, the hurricane stays well to the south. 

A sort of storm, a weak thing near the Bahamas is trying to tug on Melissa, which is why it's ever so slowly crawling northward. It'll keep doing that through about Friday, the National Hurricane Center thinks, at a pace that this 63 year old writer could easily outrun -really outwalk -  it if Melissa were a person. 

The disturbance near the Bahamas will zip away, and forecasters think this will make Melissa make a sharp left turn and intensify. When it makes its left turn - if it does - will have a huge effect on how bad things get in Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic,and maybe Cuba.

At this point, Jamaica looks like it might really be in jeopardy. Melissa is already coming close enough to Hispaniola and Jamaica to raise the threat of flooding and mudslides. If a powerful Hurricane Melissa hits Jamaica, that would be absolutely catastrophic. 

The forecast is really complicated, so Melissa can, and probably will pulls some surprises. It could keep heading north to blast Haiti or maybe eastern Cuba. It could turn toward the north or northeast near or just west of Jamaica, putting western Cuba and the Bahamas in the crosshairs. 

There's a chance it could hit Florida, but for now, most computer models have Melissa missing the United States. There's also a chance Melissa could keep plowing west toward Central America.

One of the few certainties about Melissa is that it will continue to move incredibly slowly. So it's going to be a problem for maybe a week or more.  

This looks like a really dangerous one for somebody. 

Fiona's Fury, A Puerto Rican Utility Scandal And What's Next For Hurricane

Wreckage of a Puerto Rican home after Hurricane
Fiona. In a glimmer of reassurance, the sign
was written after the hurricane by the person
who lived there and translates to 
"I am alive."

Puerto Rico this morning is reeling from massive flash flooding and power outages thanks to Hurricane Fiona. The entire island of Puerto Rico was blacked out as Hurricane Fiona swept over the island Sunday.  

That was a function of both the fury of the storm and the scandal of a badly mismanaged power grid. 

Winds gusted past 100 mph in communities along the south shore of Puerto Rico, so you can understand why power would have failed there. On the northern end of the island, in places like San Juan, winds only gusted to 40 to 50 mph. 

In a normal world, those winds, combined with the severe flooding would have caused some outages. But the fact that everyone is blacked out is an infrastructure scandal and not entirely a hurricane disaster. 

As AccuWeather reports: 

"LUMA Energy, the private company that handles the transmission and distribution of electricity in Puerto Rico, stated that full restoration could take days 'due to the magnitude and scope of the blackout,' but the company has the necessary resources to respond to Fiona's effects on the grid."

Given LUMA's track record, and the power authorities in Puerto Rico before that, I'm not convinced. 

The Washington Post led with this story Monday:

"The hurricane winds that knocked out power to the entire island of Puerto Rico over the weekend encountered an electrical grid that experts liken to a house of cards: a fragile, decrepit, patchwork system running on old equipment that has failed to substantially modernize since the U.S. territory's deadliest storm, Hurricane Maria, swept through five years before."

A state-run utility that should manage electricity generation is bankrupt and negotiations to restructure a nasty $9 billion in debt is still mired in mediation and recrimination. Even before Fiona, power disruptions were increasing in Puerto Rico, suggesting incompetence or worse. 

Most of Puerto Rico's power is generated on the southern side of the island. Transmission lines run north through mountainous terrain, then on to the more heavily populated north. Storms in the remote mountains often disrupt these transmission lines. Puerto Rico ought to rethink its power grid, but that takes tons of money, which the territory clearly doesn't have, and imagination, which seems to be lacking, too. 

Hurricane Fiona is forecast to make a beeline for far
eastern Canada as a powerful storm over the weekend. 

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency has funded billions to help Puerto Rico recover from Hurricane Maria, notes the Washington Post. A large share of that money was to go toward modernizing the electrical grid, but distribution of those funds have been slow to say the least.  

It'll be even slower now.  Rainfall on Puerto Rico was cataclysmic, with up to 33 inches of rain reported. Some of the flooding was even worse than what happened during Maria. 

Fiona moved on to trash eastern Dominican Republic with more wind and flood damage. It cruised through the eastern Turks and Caicos today after having gotten even stronger, with top winds of 115 mph.  

Forecasters predict the hurricane will continue northward, passing close to Bermuda as a powerful Category 4 storm. 

A strong cold front that will give us in Vermont a chilly end of the week will keep Fiona well off the U.S East Coast. However, chances are growing that Fiona, while transitioning to a powerful non-tropical storm, will blast eastern Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador over the weekend. 

Video: 

Summary from Inside Edition, either click on this link or click on image below:

An ABC News report, too: