Hurricane Melissa: record-breaking storm exposes a warming Caribbean’s new reality

By Anders Lorenzen

As Hurricane Melissa hurtled towards Jamaica’s coast and people were bracing for impacts, it became, with one month left of the 2025 Atlantic Hurricane season, the most powerful of this year so far, and the first major storm of the season not to impact the US.

Hurricane Melissa struck as the third Category Five hurricane to strike this season and the fourth major storm.

Just over 24 hours since it made landfall in Jamaica, it has weakened to a Category One Hurricane and has left devastation behind in Jamaica and Haiti, before heading to the Bahamas and Cuba.

As Melissa struck Jamaica on Wednesday, it became the island’s most powerful storm on record near New Hope, in south-west Jamaica, with sustained winds of around 185 mph (295 km/h) and a minimum central pressure near 892 millibars. That makes Melissa one of the most intense Atlantic landfalling hurricanes ever recorded. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has described it as “Jamaica’s worst storm this century.”

The powerful monster hurricane battered the island with torrential rain, extreme winds, and a storm surge reaching up to four metres. Early reports described large areas of the St Elizabeth parish as “underwater”, roofs torn off in Kingston and Montego Bay, and widespread power cuts affecting hundreds of thousands. 

While it will be some time before we get a clear picture of fatalities, missing people and displaced people, as well as economic data, as of Thursday 23:00 GMT time, it is estimated that across the impacted countries, 44 people have died so far, and economic damage is estimated at $7.7 billion (BN) for Jamaica alone. 

But as rescue teams and clean-up operations commence, we can expect fatalities and the economic damage figures to increase.

Rapid intensification over record-warm seas

Scientists say the storm’s explosive growth and extraordinary strength carry the unmistakable fingerprints of a warming world.

Meteorologists have been struck by the speed at which Melissa intensified. Over just a few days, it evolved from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane — a process known as rapid intensification, defined as a rise in sustained wind speeds of at least 35 mph within 24 hours.

Such explosive growth is becoming increasingly common. The Caribbean Sea, over which Melissa strengthened, recorded surface temperatures around 30 °C, about 1.5 °C above the seasonal average. Warm seas act as high-octane fuel for hurricanes, releasing vast quantities of latent heat into the atmosphere.

“Melissa has been a strange hurricane, hanging around in the Atlantic and getting stronger in bursts. These rapid intensifications will also become more common with climate change. This is not a hypothetical scenario to be imagined. This is a real and deadly storm,” said Professor Hannah Cloke, Professor of Hydrology, University of Reading, as she categorised the nature of this major storm.

The storm’s slow movement as it approached land amplified the destruction, prolonging exposure to high winds, flooding, and storm surge. That combination, scientists warn, is part of a troubling new pattern: stronger, wetter, slower storms.

The climate connection

The science around hurricanes and climate change is continuously evolving, and similar to other extreme weather events, while climate change does not create hurricanes, it supercharges them, making them much more powerful, severe and deadly. 

Decades of research now show that warmer oceans and air are increasing the intensity, rainfall, and destructive potential of tropical cyclones.

While we wait for the first rapid attribution study of Hurricane Melissa, there are a few things we can draw on in terms of linking it to a warming world.

First, the strength of Melissa can be associated with the unusually high sea-surface temperatures around the Caribbean, contributing to supercharging the storm. 

The warmer air around the Caribbean holds more water vapour, which leads to the heavier rainfall. 

And finally, the sea levels, which have gradually been rising over the years and decades due to global climate change, increase the risk of storm surges and flooding.

The human and environmental impacts

As the aftermath has already begun, where Melissa struck first, such as in Jamaica, there could be a long, slow and painful wait before we know the full impacts.

What’s perhaps the most scary factor is that when it comes to the Caribbean, Jamaica is one of the, if not the most developed, countries in the region, and even there, the impacts based on initial images and personal accounts have been devastating, having been declared a disaster zone.

For Jamaica, a country of just three million people, the damage is immense. Entire communities in the south-west have been cut off by floods and landslides. Hospitals in Kingston and Mandeville have reported roof damage, while hundreds of homes have been destroyed.

The island’s agricultural sector — already under strain from drought and heat — faces another severe blow. Flooding has swept through key sugar and banana-growing regions, while power outages threaten food storage and water supply.

Environmental experts fear serious ecosystem impacts, too. Coral reefs, mangroves and coastal forests act as natural storm defences but have already been degraded by warming seas and pollution. Powerful storm surges like Melissa’s can further damage coral systems and wash sediments onto coastal habitats, reducing their resilience for the future.

The WMO and Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency have both described the event as “a sobering warning” for the region’s climate preparedness.

Even though Melissa was most powerful when it struck Jamaica, the smaller and poorer island nations such as Cuba and Haiti could end up seeing greater impacts.

Resilience and adaptation

Anyone who is familiar with the UN climate talks would know that Jamaica, other Caribbean nations, and small island states have long argued that they are on the front line of the climate crisis — suffering some of the worst impacts despite contributing little to global emissions.

Climate advocates will be hopeful that Hurricane Melissa will give extra impetus for extra focus on climate adaptation as the next round of UN climate talks, COP30, begins in Brazil on November 10th.

A picture of what is to come

As Hurricane Melissa disperses and the human and economic costs emerge, climate advocates and experts would want to amplify the arguments that this is not a standalone one-in-a-lifetime event, but a warning that climate models have been warning for decades that tropical cyclones are becoming more extreme as the world continues to warm. 

Anders Lorenzen is the founding Editor of A greener life, a greener world.

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