The death toll from Hurricane Melissa rose Thursday to nearly 50 people, officials said, after the ferocious storm devastated Caribbean islands and was bearing down on Bermuda.
Flooding was expected to subside in the Bahamas although high water could persist in Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and neighboring Dominican Republic, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
The storm, one of the most powerful ever recorded, was made four times more likely because of human-caused climate change, according to a study by Imperial College London.
Tropical storm conditions were occurring on Bermuda late Thursday and the island was under a hurricane warning, with maximum sustained winds of 100 miles (155 kilometers) per hour, the NHC said.