Tropical Storm Melissa is nearly stationary in the central Caribbean, with forecasters warning it could soon strengthen and brush past Jamaica as a powerful hurricane.

Tropical Storm Melissa is set to intensify this weekend, and Jamaica and other Caribbean islands are bracing for harsh weather, forecasters with the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Thursday morning.

The storm was making its way to the Bahamas and Bermuda on Thursday morning as Jamaica confronted the devastation from one of the most potent storms ever recorded anywhere.

Hurricane Melissa, the strongest tropical cyclone of 2025, disrupts Caribbean travel, closing airports and causing widespread flight cancellations.

Hurricane Melissa on Monday intensified into a Category 5 storm, the most powerful of hurricanes, while continuing to drop torrents of “catastrophic” rain across the Caribbean, the

Melissa is expected to strengthen from a tropical storm into a major hurricane this weekend, bringing “life-threatening and catastrophic” flash flooding and landslides to the Caribbean.

Now, as a weakened category 2 storm, there have been some impacts felt in the Bahamas, with Melissa tracking toward Bermuda on Thursday. Beyond that, as can be fairly typical, Melissa will weaken so that it will no longer be a hurricane or tropical storm as it moves into the North Atlantic.

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,