Forecasters said the colossal amount of rain dropped on parts of Florida east and north of Orlando was comparable to what the region saw from a hurricane in 2022, underscoring the state's vulnerability to extreme weather far beyond the tropical storms that brew offshore.

With peak sustained winds of 180 mph and even higher gusts, Hurricane Melissa is forecast to be the strongest storm ever to strike Jamaica.

The strongest Atlantic storm on record was 2005’s Hurricane Wilma, with an all-time-low pressure of 882 mb. It hit that peak at sea while it was a Category 5. But it made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 and dealt a crushing blow to a large swath of the state.

The storm has grown to one of the Atlantic's strongest on record, and is threatening to be the Atlantic's first Category 5 landfall since 2019.

"It is more than kind of distressing because you don't know when and you don't know how," said Ewan Simpson, who lives in Jamaica.

“Melissa is expected to reach Jamaica and southeastern Cuba as an extremely dangerous major hurricane, and it will still be at hurricane strength when it moves across the southeastern Bahamas” on Wednesday, the hurricane center said in its 5 a.m. advisory.

Melissa is a deadly Category 5 hurricane and is expected to become to worst hurricane in Jamaica's history before it travels north to Cuba.

Here's how flood insurance works in Florida, where and when to find a policy, and how many types of home insurance policies there are.