Melissa could briefly bring a swell and rough seas to the U.S. East Coast after it passes the Bahamas later in the week, but because of the angle and speed at which it's moving off into the Atlantic, Roth said any coastal impacts should be short-lived.

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 news “underscores the profound ecological toll that Hurricane Melissa will have on Jamaica’s biodiversity,” said one expert on the island.

"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.