Hurricane Melissa hits Jamaica with violent winds
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hurricane Melissa has made landfall in Jamaica - its most powerful storm since records began. The US National Hurricane Centre said the eye hit the southwest of the island with estimated maximum wind speeds close to three hundred kilometres an hour.
Also in the programme: Fear of mass killings as thousands trapped in besieged Sudan city taken by militia group; Israel has carried out air strikes on Gaza -- after its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, accused Hamas of breaching the ceasefire deal; and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales on the precious commodity, trust.
(Photo: A fallen tree on a road caused by Hurricane Melissa in Kingston. Credit: Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.3 | Hello and welcome to NewsHout from the BBC World Service coming to live from London with me, Sean Lay. |
| 0:15.2 | It feels as if we're being stalked by the hurricane. |
| 0:18.7 | That's what a Jamaican government minister told me on Monday's news hour. |
| 0:22.2 | The slow advance of storm Melissa over the 24 hours which followed |
| 0:25.2 | as if anything made the anticipation worse. |
| 0:28.3 | It hit the island at lunchtime, local time, that's about three and a half hours ago, |
| 0:32.3 | in all its terrifying majesty, with torrential rain, powerful winds, |
| 0:36.2 | and on the coast, storm surges of water pounding |
| 0:39.6 | buildings. Melissa struck near New Hope, 62 kilometres south of Montego Bay, one of the country's main |
| 0:46.4 | tourist areas. The US National Hurricane Centre said wind speeds reached 295 kilometres per hour, |
| 0:52.6 | about 185 miles an hour, before the storm was downgraded |
| 0:56.5 | in the last hour or so to category four, still severe, still life-threatening. Before the storm hit, |
| 1:03.1 | Evan Thompson, principal director of the Meteorological Service of Jamaica, warned about the |
| 1:07.5 | danger the island faced from its impact. We did say that the system is a category five hurricane at this time, and when it makes landfall, |
| 1:14.9 | it is expected to still be a category five hurricane. |
| 1:18.5 | That means it will cause catastrophic damage, life-threatening damage. |
| 1:24.6 | There is very little that can stop a category 5 hurricane. If you are under the |
| 1:29.9 | impact of those category 5 hurricane force wins, you will be having significant difficulty, even |
| 1:37.5 | with infrastructure that's in the area. So ensure that you are in the strongest area that you can. |
| 1:44.2 | Pierre traveled from the UK only on Saturday for a holiday with her son. |
| 1:48.6 | They're in Lucy, a town in Hanover parish to the west of Montego Bay. |
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