Tropical Storm Melissa is close to hurricane strength Saturday morning, forecast to rapidly intensify close to a Category 5 storm, but moving slowly while dumping “catastrophic” amounts of rain on islands where it’s already taken a deadly toll.

The National Hurricane Center warned of flash flooding and landslides for portions of Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica through the weekend with the slow-moving storm potentially dropping not just inches, but feet of rain. At least three people were killed in Haiti, and one person was killed and one reported missing in Dominican Republic.

As of the NHC’s 8 a.m. advisory Saturday, Melissa was just shy of hurricane strength with sustained winds of 70 mph located about 160 miles southeast of Kingston, Jamaica and 235 miles southwest of Port a

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