Hurricane Melissa, which made landfall on Tuesday on the south coast of Jamaica, not solely made historical past, the storm shocked hurricane specialists with its skills.
Melissa had sustained wind speeds at landfall of 185 mph, which ties for the strongest Atlantic landfall in recorded historical past with the 1935 Labor Day hurricane and 2019’s Hurricane Dorian.
The Labor Day storm hit the Florida Keys and killed a whole bunch of individuals, and Dorian hit Abaco within the Bahamas, killing 74 folks and leaving a whole bunch extra lacking, in accordance with the Bahamian authorities. The storm later brought about no less than 78 deaths in the USA.
Startling endurance
Hurricane’s don’t normally preserve Class 5 power (sustained winds of 157 mph or larger) for very lengthy.
This 12 months’s hurricanes Humberto and Erin, which by no means made landfall, every had a six-hour stretch of Cat 5 energy.
2005’s Katrina managed 18 hours.
Melissa stayed at Class 5 for 36 hours, the fifth-longest in recorded historical past, in accordance with WPLG-TV hurricane specialist Michael Lowry’s Eye on the Tropics publication.
Highest hurricane winds ever?
On Tuesday, Hurricane Hunters with the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dropped a dropsonde, an instrument used to measure windspeed, into Melissa’s eyewall. When the dropsonde neared the ocean’s floor it measured a sudden wind gust of 252 mph.
“That’s maybe the best windspeed measurement made by a dropsonde (inside a tropical cyclone) in historical past,” stated Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher with the College of Miami Rosenstiel College of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. He stated it might be confirmed later this 12 months.
Excessive intensification
A storm that ramps up in wind pace by 35 mph inside 24 hours is taken into account by NOAA to be quickly intensifying. Melissa turbocharged by about 70 mph throughout a 24-hour interval. “That’s extraordinary,” McNoldy stated.
WFLA-TV meteorologist Jeff Berardelli thinks Melissa is a part of an intensification pattern fueled, partially, by human-driven local weather change.
Ocean heat fuels storms, and oceans are hotter now than they had been within the twentieth century.
Berardelli discovered that the final 22 years (2003-2025) had greater than twice the quantity of Cat 4 and Cat 5 storms than the earlier 22 years (1980-2002).
Going previous mountains
One factor that surprised McNoldy when he checked out satellite tv for pc footage of Melissa nearing Jamaica’s southern coast was that the numerous mountains of the island didn’t weaken or put a divot within the storm till after the storm was over land.
The mountains in western Jamaica, the place the storm hit, vary from 600 ft to the 4,839-foot Mount Horeb.
“Mountains ought to interrupt the floor circulation,” stated McNoldy. “Even when Jamaica had been flat it ought to have had an impression, like asymmetries within the storm. And that simply didn’t occur.” The storm maintained its pristine kind. That “blows my thoughts,” he wrote on Bluesky.
What blows my thoughts about that is that #Melissa does not even discover that there is a massive mountainous island proper subsequent to it. It is just like the map define was drawn on there arbitrarily.
— Brian McNoldy (@bmcnoldy.bsky.social) 2025-10-28T15:10:55.076Z
Melissa’s capability to collide with mountains and nonetheless have 185 mph sustained winds at landfall makes the storm maybe extra spectacular.
The opposite 185 mph storms encountered no mountains. The 1935 Labor Day storm rolled over the flat Florida Keys, and Dorian hit the Bahamas, the place there’s scant obstacle to the storm’s rotation.
Melissa’s small diameter doubtless helped. Huge storms hit obstacles earlier, whereas narrower storms can method nearer earlier than being compromised, McNoldy stated.
“With actually compact storms, they’re extra vulnerable to extremes. They will go actually, actually loopy and intensify, or with the primary trace of vertical wind shear, they get upset and weaken. On this case there was no wind shear.”
Deep scorching water
Berardelli calculated that the floor water below Melissa was about 4 levels hotter than it will have been round 100 years in the past. “That’s large!” he wrote on X. “That additional warmth powers a better horse energy engine with heavier wind & rain.”
However depth is what gave Melissa actual endurance. McNoldy stated one of many causes Melissa was in a position to keep at a Class 5 for 30 hours was due to the deep scorching water south of Jamaica on the time.
Hurricanes trigger ocean upwelling as their spinning pulls water up from the depths.
If a storm is transferring quick, say 25 mph, it’s continually encountering new scorching floor water, which fuels the storm’s energy.
If a storm is transferring slowly, like Melissa, which was touring at 3 mph, it will possibly pull up chilly water, which weakens the storm.
Hurricanes want waters of no less than 78 F to develop. McNoldy crunched the numbers and located that the waters south of Jamaica had been no less than 78 F all the way in which right down to depths of 393 ft — the water that Melissa pulled as much as the floor was heat sufficient to maintain the storm robust if not make it stronger.
“It was over very excessive ocean warmth content material, so it may simply sit there and never upwell cooler water,” stated McNoldy.
Unimaginable view of a C-130 Hurricane Hunter flying into Hurricane Melissa. pic.twitter.com/SBY0gcTptz
— Turbine Traveller (@Turbinetraveler) October 28, 2025
The right storm
The hurricane hunter plane that flew into Melissa’s eye earlier than it made landfall in Jamaica took video of the beast of a storm, and it seemed nearly like a sculpture, as if it had been spun on a pottery wheel.
“For those who may ever decide a hurricane hunter flight to be on, it will be right into a Class 5 throughout the daytime,” stated McNoldy. “It will be actually superb. At that time, Class 5 storms have achieved perfection.”
