Breaking: 185 MPH [Category 5] Hurricane Melissa Hit Cuba, [Potential] Hit NOLA Next Monday with Lower Category
Hurricane Melissa just slammed into the city of Santiago de Cuba with winds of 185 MPH [298 KILOMETER PER HOUR — extremely dangerous] and a pressure of 952 mbar. This is the 2nd largest city on the island of Cuba and major street flooding has already been ongoing for hours. The NHC [National Hurricane Center] continues to warn that “life-threatening storm surge, flash flooding and landslides, and extremely damaging Hurricane winds” are likely to persist in eastern Cuba through Wednesday morning.
Santiago de Cuba (the nation’s second largest city, of course after Havana) is in line to take the brunt of the right front surge punch from still major hurricane Melissa. If we just draw a straight line from the center’s current trajectory and circle the city, it’s easy to see how this is going to go.
Melissa quickly intensifying. If it had more time over water, certainly would keep Cat. 5. Should be a Category 4 landfall to eastern Cuba. Will be the 1st hurricane in 90 years to hit eastern Cuba from the south.
The geography of the city is such that a ton of water is going to get squeezed into the bay from the south with the center making landfall just to the west. What’s the good news? The elevation in the city rises rapidly so even with a large surge, most places stay above it.
Hurricane Melissa presents a golden opportunity for the massive US Navy flotilla: instead of pathetically threatening Venezuela, it can build goodwill by rolling up its sleeves in Jamaica and Cuba to help alleviate storm damage. Don’t forget Cuba, a country already suffering shortages and a crippling US economic blockade. Tomorrow the U.N. will vote again to overwhelmingly condemn the US policy.
Hurricane Melissa could produce lots of gusty winds, rains, maybe severe storms from New Orleans, southern Louisiana, into the FL Panhandle next Sunday or Monday [3-3.5 days from now].
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If you feel powerless to help Gaza, you still has a choice: donate. When so much of what exists is false, authenticity is a powerful weapon we can wield that the state never could. So if you feel lost, hopeless, depressed, angry and afraid, I implore you to return - again - again - and again - to the feeling of love that exists within you that brought you here in the first place. It is only through this that we can remake the world. To redress Gaza’s famine, displacement, and destruction, independent and impartial humanitarian organizations - UN agencies, international and national NGOs - must be allowed to deliver relief at scale. To salvage Gaza’s people from the devastation inflicted by Israel, it must be unified with the West Bank to form an independent and sovereign Palestinian State, not to be parceled and colonized by the former.
Meanwhile, children continue to be shredded by US bombs, and the starvation reaches new depths of hellish collective punishment. If both parties are going to continue to support an ongoing genocide, at least they can both be honest about doing so, rather than having one openly bloodthirsty party, and another—unconvincingly—playing the role of powerless, bumbling humanitarian.
Please keep donate Gaza especially if you, as reader, has [background] International Relation [whatever universities]. IR Graduate means [you must, at least] get some semester [about] studying Middle East [in macro, not specifically Gaza].
We need more people to share fundraisers instead of only talking about Gaza. Some people think that those in Gaza don’t need money but that’s wrong. Almost everyone lost their source of income while essentials, food & medicine get sold for astronomical prices. So I put my attempt in all social media as I can, in twitter / X, in substack [since October 2023 I put link donation], in bluesky or bsky, in threads, in instagram.
Link to donate World Food Programme - Palestine appeal: click here
[Daniel Brühl]
Most campaign shared or circulated in social media are for REAL people in Gaza. They’re legit. There are a lot of small campaigns for struggling families. This is their only lifeline. By donating & sharing, you are literally making history and alleviating part of their pain
Please do not rely on me alone for sharing your campaign. I’m only 1 person and sometimes I’m not online which is unreliable. I never ignore anybody on purpose but I have a very limited capacity & very little energy and time.
[Refaat Rafiq Alareer IF I MUST DIE] Refaat Rafiq Alareer was extremely hungry, November 2023, days before Refaat killed by Israel airstrike. If November 2023 already [one-by-one Gazan] extremely famine, extremely hungry, imagine October 2025 or 2 years Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.
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