Hurricane Melissa: A record-breaking hurricane
Randy Mann.
JAKE PARRISH/Press
We all heard about the catastrophic hurricane that slammed into Jamaica last week. Hurricane Melissa rewrote the record books when it made landfall Oct. 28, near New Hope in southwestern Jamaica. The storm arrived as a Category 5 hurricane, which is the highest classification on the Saffir-Simpson scale. With winds of up to 185 miles per hour and a central pressure of 26.34 inches, Melissa was the most powerful storm ever to directly strike Jamaica, and one of the most intense hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic and Caribbean waters.
The storm’s rapid intensification occurred between Oct. 25 and 27. Within just 48 hours, Melissa exploded from a tropical storm into a Category 5 powerhouse, driven by warm Caribbean waters and nearly ideal atmospheric conditions. When it slammed into Jamaica’s southern coast, it tied the 1935 Labor Day hurricane record of the lowest barometric pressures from a hurricane, and the second strongest Atlantic hurricane in terms of one-minute sustained wind speeds.
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