{"id":58639,"date":"2025-10-24T00:51:54","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T04:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=58639"},"modified":"2025-10-24T00:51:59","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T04:51:59","slug":"tampa-bay-community-watching-closely-as-tropical-storm-melissa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2025\/10\/24\/tampa-bay-community-watching-closely-as-tropical-storm-melissa\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay community watching closely as Tropical Storm Melissa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to the National Hurricane Center, a hurricane watch and tropical storm warning are in effect for Jamaica and parts of Haiti as Tropical Storm Melissa moves through the Caribbean Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" data-dominant-color=\"cde2df\" data-has-transparency=\"false\" style=\"--dominant-color: #cde2df;\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"541\" height=\"350\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1110px) 100vw, 1110px\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/spaghetti-Tuesday-afternoon-3.webp?resize=541%2C350&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-58640 not-transparent\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/spaghetti-Tuesday-afternoon-3.webp?w=541&amp;ssl=1 541w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/spaghetti-Tuesday-afternoon-3.webp?resize=300%2C194&amp;ssl=1 300w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Melissa is expected to become a hurricane in the next couple of days, and heavy rainfall will impact Jamaica, parts of Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The NHC says Tropical Storm Melissa is currently in the center of the Caribbean Sea in the southeastern portion of Jamaica and the southwestern portion of Haiti.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">People with family and connections overseas say they are concerned but prepared to help in the storm\u2019s aftermath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI have family there and she is always keeping an eye on everything that\u2019s happening over there,\u201d Jiminez said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Latin American Barber Shop barber Henrry Jiminez said his mother has been keeping him updated and is bracing for what\u2019s to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe\u2019ll help if we can. Let\u2019s hope to God nothing happens,\u201d Jiminez said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kreyol Delight 2 restaurant manager Lassie Oscar said Tropical Storm Melissa is not what Haiti needs right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s scary because most of the people in Haiti now don\u2019t have a house and they\u2019re either running for their life away from the gangs or have to leave their area or where they are because they\u2019re taking over their houses,\u201d Oscar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As of Thursday evening, the National Hurricane Center said Melissa is expected to bring up to 14 inches of rain to southern Hispaniola and eastern Jamaica and up to four inches across northern Hispaniola and western Jamaica through Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Oscar said the management team of both Kreyol Delight restaurant locations will be helping out of pocket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSometimes it\u2019s just a fund transfer, and sometimes it\u2019s somebody that\u2019s going there that you would send it with. So once everything happens, we\u2019ll figure out how to help because regardless, they are family,\u201d Oscar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jiminez says he is hoping for a different outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI think it\u2019ll go in a different direction,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The National Hurricane Center said Tropical Storm Melissa could become a hurricane sometime next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to the National Hurricane Center, a hurricane watch and tropical storm warning are in effect for Jamaica and parts of Haiti as Tropical Storm Melissa moves through the Caribbean&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"694","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMTBcL3NwYWdoZXR0aS1UdWVzZGF5LWFmdGVybm9vbi0zLndlYnA_Zml0PTU0MSUyQzM1MCZzc2w9MSIsInR4dCI6IlRhbXBhIEJheSBjb21tdW5pdHkgd2F0Y2hpbmcgY2xvc2VseSBhcyBUcm9waWNhbCBTdG9ybSBNZWxpc3NhIiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJoaWdod2F5IiwiZm9udCI6IiIsImJsb2dfaWQiOjE2MzA0MDY2MX0.xyPmjai_L8XnysMtQF2QhDJPOPPTPzuCY4QIbsc5U-wMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":58640,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/spaghetti-Tuesday-afternoon-3.webp","type":"image\/webp"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[694],"tags":[12442],"class_list":["post-58639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weather-by-o","tag-tampa-bay-community-watching-closely-as-tropical-storm-melissa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58641,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58639\/revisions\/58641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}