Overview
- Now a Category 1 storm with 90 mph winds, Melissa passed north of Bermuda early Friday with hurricane-force gusts and bands of heavy rain, according to the National Hurricane Center.
- Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on October 28 as a Category 5 with estimated 185 mph sustained winds, among the strongest Atlantic landfalls on record, and a 252 mph reconnaissance reading at about 700 feet is under review for post-season analysis.
- The storm’s winds doubled from roughly 70 to 140 mph within 24 hours before climbing to Category 5, exemplifying extreme rapid intensification that analyses show has become more frequent in recent decades.
- Rapid attribution studies found that human-driven warming made the hot Caribbean waters hundreds of times more likely and increased Melissa’s wind speeds by around 10 mph, with Imperial College researchers estimating a several-fold rise in event likelihood.
- Preliminary estimates put direct physical damage in Jamaica at about $7.7 billion, while AccuWeather projects total economic losses of roughly $22 billion when accounting for impacts to tourism, power, travel and shipping.