Tropical Storm Melissa is expected to strengthen into a hurricane, threatening the northern Caribbean with massive rainfall and life-threatening flooding

The National Hurricane Center’s 8 a.m. Friday update reported that Tropical Storm Melissa is in the Caribbean Sea, 185 miles southeast of Kingston Jamaica and 260 miles southwest of Port Au Prince Haiti. Packing maximum sustained winds of 45 mph, it is tracking east-southeast at 1 mph.

Hurricane Melissa, after causing widespread catastrophic damage in Jamaica and Cuba, is now a Category 2 hurricane moving away from the Bahamas and racing toward the North Atlantic. The storm is forecast to pass just to the west of Bermuda this evening & tonight.

Dozens of people were already in shelters in the Dominican Republic, and schools, businesses and government agencies were closed.

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.