Hurricane Melissa unleashed devastation in Jamaica as the strongest storm on record ever to hit the Caribbean island nation, and roared later on Wednesday into eastern Cuba, smashing the city of Santiago and flooding rural land.

Category 5 Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica as the strongest storm — and only Category 5 hurricane — ever recorded in the nation’s history.

Hurricane Melissa was one of the strongest hurricanes on record in the Atlantic. So is that proof that climate change is amplifying hurricanes? The short answer is no.

Hurricane Melissa made landfall Wednesday morning in Cuba as a powerful Category 3 hurricane with winds of 120 mph.

The capitals and exclamation points are warranted. Hurricane Melissa is an extraordinary storm, even among the many massive, fast-growing, devastating cyclones that have been erupting in the Atlantic Ocean in recent years.

Jamaica is expected to be in the storm's eyewall, which refers to the band of dense clouds surrounding the eye of the hurricane. The eyewall generally produces the fiercest winds and heaviest rainfall, according to Deanna Hence, a professor of climate, meteorology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The storm made landfall in New Hope, Westmoreland, Jamaica on Tuesday, marking the strongest storm in the island's history. Hurricane Melissa surpassed 1988's low-end Category 4 Hurricane Gilbert as the strongest such storm to hit the island.

Switching to the tropics, Hurricane Melissa is no longer a tropical system. It will continue to bring gale-force winds and rain to little more than fish in the far northern Atlant