A quick update on Melissa
As I said, she likely would become stronger than the 160 mph hurricane the National Hurricane Center was forecasting just yesterday, Melissa continues to get stronger, and is now an extremely powerful category 5 with maximum sustained winds of 175 mph and the pressure is now down to 906mb. She is starting to take that turn and is now tracking west northwest still at 3 mph. As those upper level steering currents force her towards Jamaica.
Image credit Alex Boreham
Image credit Tomer Burg.
So far she has avoided going through the typical eye wall replacement cycles that would have helped Keep her upper end winds in check. Instead she continues to explode!
On satellite she is looking very impressive especially when you consider she's an Atlantic hurricane. Her satellite profile shows what you would typically see in the strongest western Pacific super typhoons. Here is an image courtesy of Alex Boreham that shows her impressive rapid intensification process that she has been going through, After that brief plateau that I mentioned yesterday she has continued to explode. And is now approaching the upper limit of what is considered possible for an Atlantic hurricane. So while further strengthening is possible She is just right now very close to the peak of her power. While it's possible we could see a eye wall replacement cycle before she hits Jamaica. Eye wall replacement cycles temporarily lower the winds in the hurricane, as the overall Wind field expands. But right now it doesn't look like one will occur in the near future. We could see some fluctuations in her overall power up until she makes a landfall on Jamaica early tomorrow morning. But even if she weakens, she very well could still hit Jamaica at close to her peak.
The arrow shows that pause I'm talking about.
The 2025 hurricane season has been a little strange when it comes to overall activity. Melissa is the 3rd category 5 hurricane of the 2025 hurricane season. Only the hurricane season of 2005 saw a season with more category 5s. 2005 saw Emily, Katrina, Rita and Wilma. So far Melissa has been crawling, but as she continues to make this turn towards Jamaica, she should pick up in her forward speed and make that landfall on western Jamaica tomorrow morning.
I just saw on TV that this storm was close to becoming as Big as Mathematically possible for the planet Earth.I never knew that storms had limits as to how big they could become.Yikes,Jamaica is in need of every prayer possible 🙏.I saw that Bermuda is in the path.Melissa will be weaker but how much weaker?
ReplyDeleteI have not received a Weather post from you in 6 days I believe so I went searching,I'm here as a visitor
right now.
Yes hurricanes do have an upper limit. Hurricanes are controlled by things like ocean water temperatures and atmospheric conditions. How strong they can actually get is a matter of the laws of thermodynamics and atmospheric physics. The theory is, that the absolute upper limit of a hurricane's winds is around 200-210 mph. After that the storm becomes unstable and we have to deal with energy dissipation, because there's only so much thermodynamic free energy available to do the work. I'm not sure why you haven't been getting any update notifications. I posted last week every day except for Friday And I did make post over the weekend.
DeleteWOW. I have always said the hurricanes that struck the Bahamas in 1780 would be hard to top. I would imagine this is one of those landmark storms that will be the standard against which all other storms will be compared. 1780 killed 20K people and stripped the islands bare of trees and buildings. They say it stripped the bark off the trees. Prayers for those down there. i cannot imagine where you would go or what shelter would be safe
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