After its record-breaking landfall, Melissa heads for Bermuda

Satellite image of Hurricane Melissa at landfall in Jamaica, preliminarily tied for the strongest landfall on record in the Atlantic. October 28 at 1700 UTC.

Since my previous post on Monday when Melissa first reached Category 5 status, a lot happened on Tuesday (I was just too busy to write blog posts). It ended up maintaining that Category 5 intensity for 30 hours. This post will catch up from that and look ahead to an encounter with Bermuda later today.

Melissa made landfall on the southwest coast of Jamaica in the early afternoon hours of October 28 as an extremely powerful Category 5 hurricane -- by far the strongest landfalling hurricane in Jamaica's history. It then made a second landfall in eastern Cuba as a Category 3 hurricane, and then again in the central Bahamas as a Category 1 hurricane.

Very few tropical cyclones ever reach Category 5 intensity (157+ mph) -- roughly 3% in the Atlantic when averaged over the past century. But Melissa went far beyond that on Tuesday the 28th.  It reached an exceptional 185 mph peak sustained wind speeds for several hours (at least preliminary... a post-season reanalysis will carefully scrutinize all available data and perhaps increase or decrease it). The central pressure at that time feel to 892 millibars, putting Melissa in the elite class of sub-900mb hurricanes -- there have only been seven of them known in the Atlantic now.  The two tables below put these values into historical context (verified for accuracy from Wikipedia):

But what is more incredible and terrifying is that Melissa also made landfall at that intensity and pressure! Preliminarily, it is now TIED with the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane as the most intense landfalling storm ever in the Atlantic. Both the peak winds and the central pressure were the same (185 mph and 892 mb) so as of now there's no tiebreaker... this is definitely going to be a topic of extreme scrutiny and careful analysis during the post-season reanalysis period.  Here are the same tables as above but just for landfall:

Unlike 1935 when there were no radar or satellite images, I have a very long radar loop of Melissa's historic approach to Jamaica from their radar in Kingston available at https://bmcnoldy.earth.miami.edu/tropics/radar/. The loop abruptly ends when either the radar itself was destroyed or communication was lost with it -- I don't know yet.

As of Thursday morning, Melissa is a re-intensifying Category 2 hurricane headed toward Bermuda. It could potentially have time to reach Category 3 status again before weakening and transitioning to an extratropical cyclone over the cold north-central Atlantic on Friday or Saturday. Its closest approach to Bermuda will be right around midnight tonight.

Despite the vertical wind shear increasing and the sea surface temperature decreasing, the storm is intensifying as it accelerates to the northeast. This can be accomplished through a mechanism called "baroclinic enhancement". Essentially, it's extracting energy from temperature gradients associated with a trough approaching from the west. 

One month remains in this exceptional hurricane season (THREE Category 5 hurricanes!). But as of the end of October, the season has had 13 named storms, including 5 hurricanes and 4 major hurricanes.  Climatologically by the end of October those counts are 13, 6, and 3. This ratio of major hurricanes to named storms is an interesting one... a kind of "quality-over-quantity" index. Here is what that percentage looks like over the past fifty years, and note the average is 21%. This season is certainly on the high end so far at 31%; the only higher percentages during this period were in 2017, 2004, 1999, and 1996.

Looking at the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE), that is now up to 113% of average for the date, and is already higher than what a full average season has. If I include NHC's intensity forecasts for Melissa out to the end of the month, the ACE will be at 115% of average, and that's what I'm showing below:

• Visit the Tropical Atlantic Headquarters.
• Subscribe to get these updates emailed to you.
• Follow me on Bluesky

Melissa becomes third Category 5 hurricane of the extraordinary 2025 season

For only the second time in recorded history, an Atlantic season has produced three Category 5 hurricanes... the previous year was 2005.  This puts 2025 in an elite class of hurricane seasons. It also means that nearly 7% of all known Category 5 hurricanes have occurred just in this year.

Early Monday morning, Melissa reached the rare Category 5 intensity -- and is still intensifying. The terrible aspect of this is that the center is only 100 miles from the southern coast of Jamaica, and will soon be headed toward the island.  No Category 5 hurricane has made a direct landfall on Jamaica in recorded history.  No one living there has ever experienced anything like what is about to happen.

Over the next three days, Melissa will slowly crawl across Jamaica, then begin accelerating as it crosses eastern Cuba and then the eastern Bahamas.  

Aside from being subjected to extremely destructive winds for a day+, coastal areas will experience extremely destructive long-duration storm surge of perhaps 9-13 feet, and the entire island and surrounding areas will experience extremely destructive long-duration flash flooding and mudslides, with some parts of Jamaica forecast to possibly get over 3 feet of rain.

[see SciAm's article from October 23: "Major Hurricane Melissa Will Drop Catastrophic Amounts of Rain on Jamaica"]

I have long updating radar loops available at https://bmcnoldy.earth.miami.edu/tropics/radar/, though I fear we may lose the radar in Kingston, Jamaica as the eyewall approaches.

As I wrote in Friday's post, the ACE will indeed cross back above the "average" line today, and continue to climb in the coming days, probably boosting the season's total above 100% for the remainder of the season -- even if nothing else forms.

There is nothing of interest for new development in the foreseeable future, but the season is not over. Water temperatures in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico are extremely warm (anomalously warm for the date) and those exactly the areas we have to watch out for in this late part of the season.  The next name on the list is Nestor.

https://bmcnoldy.earth.miami.edu/tropics/sectors/

• Visit the Tropical Atlantic Headquarters.
• Subscribe to get these updates emailed to you.
• Follow me on Bluesky

Melissa likely to rapidly intensify this weekend

Almost nothing has changed since my previous post on Tuesday, but I'll provide the few updates there are regarding Melissa. Melissa is still a tropical storm, and is still in the central Caribbean and is barely moving.  The extremely warm and deep waters of the Caribbean near Jamaica will provide an endless fuel source with no opportunity to upwell cooler water. The vertical wind shear which has been inhibiting intensification so far is quickly decreasing. All signs point to rapid -- or "explosive" -- intensification very soon.

On Friday afternoon, Tropical Storm Melissa is intensifying and is forecast to become the season's fifth hurricane shortly.  It has barely moved in the past couple of days, and is only forecast to drift to the west toward Jamaica over the next 3-4 days. This will undoubtedly result in a significant disaster in Jamaica, but also further east in Haiti and perhaps even the Dominican Republic.  A Category 4 or 5 hurricane landfall is bad enough, but to have it last for a few days is much worse (remember Dorian over the western Bahamas in 2019?), and the rainfall and resulting flash floods and mudslides in mountainous areas will be devastating. I have long updating radar loops from Jamaica available at https://bmcnoldy.earth.miami.edu/tropics/radar/.

The track forecast takes Melissa over Jamaica on Tuesday, then eastern Cuba and the Bahamas on Wednesday.  The multi-day stall will be definitively ended as a deep trough sweeps in across the eastern U.S. and picks the storm up and accelerates it off to the northeast. As of now, hurricane watches are in effect for Jamaica and Haiti's Tiburon Peninsula.

Assuming Melissa becomes a major hurricane (Category 3+), it would not be out of place at all historically. Below is a map showing tracks of the twenty major hurricanes that have been in the Caribbean Sea during October, going back to 1920.  The most recent were Delta (2020), Matthew (2016), and Sandy (2012).  There have been five Category 5 October Caribbean hurricanes: Matthew (2016), Wilma (2005), Mitch (1998), Hattie (1961), Unnamed (1924). They all made landfall eventually of course because it's virtually impossible to escape the Caribbean without hitting land.

The season's Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) is at 90% of average for the date, but that's about to change quite a bit as Melissa intensifies. Based on NHC's current intensity forecast, 2025's ACE will cross above the average line on Monday.

• Visit the Tropical Atlantic Headquarters.
• Subscribe to get these updates emailed to you.
• Follow me on Bluesky