Hurricane Melissa left meteorologists stunned and worried

As Hurricane Melissa neared the Jamaican coast, winds in the spiraling wall of clouds around its eye gusted to almost unimaginable speeds.

How fast? Faster than most tornadoes. Faster than a race car at Daytona. Faster than the fastest roller coaster and approaching some of the higher wind speeds in a jet stream.

As the fierce storm headed for Jamaica on Oct. 28, Andy Hazelton was aboard Kermit, one of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s reconnaissance aircraft. An associate scientist at the University of Miami, Hazelton was processing the data flowing in from the weather instruments being dropped into the storm. At one point, he watched a squiggly line showing a wind gust that veered right off the graph display.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he posted on X. The data point? A spot wind gust of 219 knots. That’s 252 mph.

“That’s booking,” said James Franklin, a retired former branch chief for the hurricane specialist’s unit at the National Hurricane Center. If the measurement verifies, as Franklin believes it will, it would be the highest speed ever recorded in a tropical cyclone by a dropsonde, one of the workhorse instruments used for decades to measure conditions inside the storms.

Melissa's extreme winds, periods of rapidly intensifying winds, and the way it skipped a typical replacement of its inner core amazed scientists who study tropical cyclones.

With peak sustained winds of 185 mph, Melissa became one of the two strongest Atlantic storms on record to make landfall, according to the preliminary data. It is also tied for the third strongest hurricane on record in the Atlantic.

If, as some suspect, the hurricane’s wind speeds are adjusted upward during the hurricane center's post-storm review, Melissa could set a new bar for the fastest winds on record for a landfalling Atlantic storm.

The storm left more than 60 people dead in Haiti, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. Its winds, rain and storm surge damaged tens of thousands of homes, as well as hospitals and roads, marooning entire communities and leaving countless people with no electricity and in need of safe shelter. An international relief effort is underway, but social media posts still plead for assistance to reach some of the hardest hit areas.

In the minds of many – but not all – hurricane and climate experts, Melissa’s terrifying trip through the Caribbean also piled on evidence of the increasing influence of a warming ocean on an evolving hurricane landscape.

Warm waters fuel storms

For four days, Melissa drifted over the Caribbean, its peak sustained winds averaging 50 mph. Its meandering path took it over some of the warmest ocean water temperatures, said Claudia Benitez-Nelson, an oceanographer and senior associate dean at the University of South Carolina.

Warmer water provides more energy for hurricanes, and temperatures in that area of the Caribbean were around 86 degrees, more than 2 degrees warmer than normal for this time of year, Benitez-Nelson said. Warmer oceans are “really supercharging some hurricanes," she said, and they’re growing stronger and wetter.

Melissa ramped up quickly on the evening of Oct. 25. Its sustained winds rocketing faster by 65 mph in just 15 hours, taking the storm to 140 mph. It briefly plateaued, then the winds grew 35 mph over the next 24 hours.

Finally, as it closed in on Jamaica on Oct. 28, evidence collected by the crew on Kermit helped show the storm's increasing winds had reached an incredible 185 mph.

Melissa's mysteries capture interest

Hurricane scientists watched with a familiar feeling of dread as Melissa traversed the Caribbean.

But as the fearsome storm unfolded, perplexing science questions emerged, said Joshua Wadler, an associate scientist at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach who was aboard the flights on Kermit with Hazelton. He and others say answering such questions can continue improving forecasts and saving lives.

On Oct. 26, "the storm felt like it had a perfect structure, everything you would think of as a rapidly intensifying major hurricane," he said. But it stopped intensifying at a Category 4 and stayed pretty "steady state during their entire flight."

It briefly stopped intensifying, then started rapidly intensifying again, Wadler said. "It's pretty rare for a storm to start rapidly intensifying when it's already a high-end Cat 4." Usually when there's a pause in intensification, it's an eyewall replacement cycle that's really noticeable, but that didn't happen here, he said. "So I think something else was going on."

Eyewall replacement occurs in strong, well-formed hurricanes like Melissa, when a new eyewall forms and replaces the previous eyewall in a process that can weaken storms.

“It would be nice to understand why that didn’t happen" in Melissa, said Franklin, the retired hurricane center expert. “What was going on in the center of the storm?”

Is climate change making some hurricanes worse?

Wadler believes storms will intensify "as much as they possibly can" if conditions are right, but he remains unconvinced that a single storm or season can be linked to warming.

"I still think it's just circumstance," he said. If there had not been a big trough over the United States, or if the steering flow had been just a little different, Melissa might have drifted over cooler water in the western Caribbean and might not have intensified as much, he said.

Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric science professor with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who specializes in hurricanes, agreed that it's hard to assess the role of climate change in a single season, but 2025 "was unusual in some ways," he said.

In just 4 years – since September 2022 – seven Category 5 hurricanes have formed in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of America, formerly the Gulf of Mexico.

That’s more than in any other period in recorded history except one. Seven Category 5 storms formed between September 2004 and September 2007. Four of those were in the hyperactive 2005 hurricane season. Category 5 is the highest ranking on the hurricane center's Saffir Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, reserved for hurricanes with winds of 157 mph or greater.

Category 5 hurricanes by decade:

Even compared with that nightmarish season 20 years ago, 2025 stands out, Emanuel said. There were 28 named storms and 15 hurricanes in 2005. This year has produced only 13 named storms, and five hurricanes, but three of them reached Category 5.

This and the rapid intensification of the other Category 5 hurricanes this summer is “consistent with what we expect and predicted” would happen in a warming world, Emanuel said. “Theory, models and satellite observations all show that the proportion of storms that intensify rapidly and achieve high intensity is increasing.”

Emanuel cautioned that warming does not mean more tropical cyclones. Even though that assertion is often repeated, he and others say it’s not yet supported by evidence. The total number of storms is fairly steady so far, he said, and some studies suggest continued warming could mean fewer storms.

In Emanuel's view, predictions that stronger storms will produce even more rain and higher storm surges aren't getting enough attention. He and other experts point out that greater flooding increases the potential for death and destruction like that seen in the Caribbean with Melissa.

It's also not only tropical cyclones that are growing more intense as they encounter warmer waters, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

A study he coauthored earlier in 2025 concluded the strongest nor’easters are becoming stronger. That’s because the offshore low-pressure systems that strike the nation's East Coast share characteristics with tropical systems, Mann said. They derive heat energy from evaporation of seawater, he said. “So warmer oceans implies stronger nor’easters.”

A particularly strong nor’easter in October along the Outer Banks of North Carolina caused the ocean to wash over the dunes in many locations, rushing down the main highway and flowing through yards. The nor'easter and the strong hurricanes passing offshore to the east this summer, have collapsed 16 houses along the stretch of islands since Sept. 16.

'We are seeing these impacts right now'

While many scientists say this run of Category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic shows the growing influence of warmer oceans on tropical cyclones, they're growing increasingly frustrated by the Trump administration's attempts to downplay such evidence, climate science in general and action to address climate change, said Keith Seitter, a professor at the College of the Holy Cross and former executive director of the American Meteorological Society.

For example, the budget offered by the administration earlier this year proposed slashing NOAA research, including its hurricane research division in Miami.

When President Donald Trump addressed the United Nations in September, he cast doubt on global warming and climate change. "It's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion," the president said.

Melissa is a reminder that humans are causing the Earth to get warmer, Seitter said. "We are seeing these impacts right now," and already paying for them.

To see the nation’s officials deny the evidence is “incredibly disheartening,” leaving frustration, anger and disappointment "very close to the surface," Seitter said.

Stronger landfalling hurricanes leave more enduring impacts that take longer to recover from and put communities further behind, especially when they have one, two or three hurricanes within a matter of years, said Benitez-Nelson and Seitter. Puerto Rico, for example, is still recovering from Hurricane Maria in 2017, while along Melissa's path, both Jamaica and Cuba are still in recovery from hurricanes in 2024.

Such disasters stress communities, states and countries, causing economic hardships and insurance industry woes, Seitter said, as well as posing individual hardships and humanitarian disasters that everyone pays for.

Dinah Voyles Pulver, a national correspondent for USA TODAY, has written about hurricanes, tornadoes and violent weather for more than 30 years. Reach her at [email protected] or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal.