The arrival and effects of Hurricane Melissa: the most violent tropical storm of 2025 so far, which is also frightening due to its slowness.
Hurricane Melissa is advancing towards Jamaica, crossing the Caribbean Sea in a north-east direction. Although most of the island state is already lapped by the rains and winds of the tropical storm, the eye of Melissa (i.e. the almost calm region at the center of the hurricane) is still located south of Jamaica: officially, a hurricane makes landfall when the eye also reaches the coast. Here are some things to know about the storm, the most violent to hit our planet so far in 2025.
1. Melissa is already a record-breaking hurricane
On Monday, October 27, the US National Hurricane Center upgraded Melissa to a category five hurricane, the highest intensity on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which measures the intensity of tropical cyclones. According to measurements of the speed of its winds (the maximum are 282 km per hour) and the pressure in the central area, Melissa is the most violent hurricane ever to directly hit Jamaica, “used” to suffering the impact of two or three tropical storms a year (in the season between June and November), but not to being directly reached on land by one of them. Since 1988 only three hurricanes have directly hit Jamaica.
2. Melissa is slow, and that’s not good news
One fact that worries scientists is Melissa’s particularly slow progress, which has reached an average of just 8 km per hour in recent days and has now dropped to just 3.2 km per hour. The slow progress of the hurricane (which has nothing to do with the intensity of the hurricane’s winds described above) could in fact lead to a longer stay over Jamaica and extremely heavy rainfall along this path. By today evening, Tuesday 28 October, peaks of 1,000 mm of rainfall are possible in some areas of the island nation. For comparison, London and Paris receive on average around 650mm of rainfall per year.
3. Hurricane preparation can also be deadly
Three deaths have already occurred in Jamaica due to Hurricane Melissa, and another 4 have occurred between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In Jamaica the deaths would be linked to activities preparing the inhabitants for the storm, so much so that the Jamaican Ministry of Health and Wellness has invited citizens to pay maximum attention: «Activities such as climbing on roofs, fixing sandbags or cutting trees may seem manageable, but even small errors during a hurricane can cause serious injuries or death. Even driving on flooded roads or in areas with debris is extremely dangerous” the authority recalled with a post on
Citizens were urged to reach high ground and be prepared for an extremely destructive impact: according to Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness, “there is no infrastructure in the region capable of withstanding a category 5 storm.”
4. Jamaica is also vulnerable to climate change
The most anticipated and feared effects of Melissa on Jamaica are flash floods and landslides. The intense rains of the last period have already saturated the soil with water and reduced its absorption capacity. Furthermore, from 1993 to today the sea level on the coasts of Jamaica has increased by about 10 centimeters – a lot, if we consider that hurricanes push coastal waters inland causing massive storm surges inland (peaks of floods called storm surge).
Melissa is expected to bring storm surges up to 4 meters high to some parts of Jamaica. Much of Jamaica’s population lives in low-lying coastal areas, with infrastructure that was not built to withstand climate change, fluctuating water supplies and an inefficient electricity grid. All these disadvantageous pre-conditions have been exacerbated by climate change, which Jamaica, a small island state, has contributed minimally to causing.
5. Birds were observed in the eye of the hurricane
Birds were spotted in the eye of the hurricane, according to hurricane hunters at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center, who flew into the storm to collect scientific data but then had to abandon the mission due to severe turbulence.
It is not unusual for migratory birds, once they reach the eye of the storm, where conditions are relatively calm, to find themselves sucked in by the surrounding winds and unable to get out. More than those unfortunate birds themselves, the news “underlines the profound ecological impact that Hurricane Melissa will have on Jamaica’s biodiversity, our coral reefs, mangroves and terrestrial ecosystems” he explained to New York Times Donovan Campbell, professor of environmental geography at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. Hurricane Melissa “threatens to undo decades of progress in ecosystem restoration and conservation.”
