Windspeed

Incredible and I mean incredible tree/vegetation damage from Melissa across a large area in this video. There's only a few TCs in recent memory that have produced damage on this scale.

Unfortunately, that's what you would expect to see from a higher-end Category 5. The footage is still insane, however. Thanks for sharing.

RE: Deaths, I would be shocked if the toll remains below 100. There is just too far wide an area of immense devestation, especially through the interior of the island, and it takes time to search with cadaver dogs through all scattered piles of debris.

Any major flooding reports from this?

Flooding did occur. I just do not have access to anything official yet. Based on images, there was clearly a strong storm surge in the right-front quadrant. Also, the eastern areas of the island did not go unscathed as there was flash flooding off the ridges. But so far, I have not read any official numbers yet on either. Hopefully, as Melissa gained forward speed while crossing the island, mudflows due to flooding were mitigated somewhat. If anyone has anything official, please share.

 Thanks. I had just seen that at https://cyclonicwx.com/climatology/

But that looks suspiciously too high as NHC has only 34.7:
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/index.php?season=2025&basin=atl
 

https://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Realtime/

CSU TC-RAMS matches NOAA's.. The other site seems off as 34.7 is corrrect.

For sure the Montego Bay damage consistent with cat3 winds

Yeah, unfortunately, it seems everything operationally is verifying on the ground. I am hopeful many lives were saved by residents heeding the advanced warnings. They had several days to plan. It will still be a miracle if the death count doesn't rise, however, despite the more densely populated areas in eastern Jamaica avoiding the eyewall. As you can see in the imagery, there are an overwhelming number of structures deroofed, walls down, or completely destroyed.

I expected the imagery to be sombering for the southern coast. But the amount of destruction on Jamaica's NW coast, Montego Bay, etc., is pretty horrible. Clearly, Melissa's eyewall remained intense all the way across the island.

The damage in this overhead imagery is pretty mind boggling.

The url on extwitter only showed the damage around those coordinates. Here's the main site you can use to zoom through what has been mapped so far.

https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/melissa/index.html

An elevated station at the National Museum of Bermuda recently reported a wind gust of 76 mph (122 km/h), with a peak gust of 98 mph (158 km/h) during the past couple of hours.

Melissa is still packing quite a punch while transitioning.

Can anyone guesstimate what the sustained winds and gusts are in this video ?

It's probably the beginnings of being overtaken by the right front quadrant of the eyewall. Josh even stated it was before peak, and they were forced to bolt the doors, as it got much worse. I'd guess what you're seeing there is somewhere between 70 to 80 kts sustained with perhaps a much higher gust towards the end.

Edit: Actually, those gusts towards the end may have actually been an increase in the sustained wind. So, again, guessing here, 70-80 kts sustained in the first bit there and then an increase to 100-110 kts towards the end. It's hard to be sure, and I am just going on visual cues from a lot of these videos over the years (which still means squat).

Huge thanks to Brian McNoldy at the Rosenstiel School of Ocean and Atmospheric Science at Miami for editing the full loops together for which I sourced these. I am posting these for posterity. Rarely do we have radar loops that show full eyewall mergers instead of eyewall replacement cycles. I will post both the short range and long range. Keep in mind the short range has limited/degraded echoes due to distance. But you can still make out the moat and concentric outer band/eyewall that was organizing in Melissa prior to the inner eyewall becoming dominant and absorbing them. The only other intense hurricane that we have radar evidence of this phenomenon is Irma prior to its landfall in the Lesser Antilles. There is much to be learned about these type of events and how they occur. Most likely, when environmental conditons are near to perfect/pristine and an inner eyewall reaches a certain degree of stability, it will not succumb to outer concentric banding, but pull those bands in and absorb them. As we can see Melissa do in these loops, the dominant eyewall becomes extremely intense after the final merger before it goes on to become a sub 900 hPa hurricane. There is probably a doctorial degree for someone here. It just requires extensive research.

Short range:



Long range:

No it was Taiwan probably 10 years ago. 

Ok, hrmm... I might be getting some of his old footage mixed up. I think I'm confusing that with when Reynolds was chasing with him.

I remember he was chasing a very strong Typhoon that hit Taiwan.  The hotel he was in got blown out and his friend got serious cuts on his arm. 

I think what you are describing was when Super Typhoon Haiyan made landfall near Tacloban, Philippines. Come to think of it, that means Josh has been in the most intense Pacific landfall and the most intense Atlantic landfall in the satellite era.

 I know many here must be exhausted, but is Melissa going to end up being the last NS of the season? Probably not. Why? I’ll look at non-El Nino seasons only:

 Since the start of the current active era, there have been 76% (16 of 21) of non-Nino seasons with at least one NS with TCG in the Nov-Dec period. The only ones without any TCG in Nov-Dec were 1995, 2000, 2010 (Thomas’ TCG was Oct 29), 2012, and 2021 (Wanda started Oct 30th).

 So, I’m giving it ~75% chance for at least one more NS in 2025.

We probably aren't done. A SW Caribbean system isn't uncommon for November. Also a few subtropical and even a purely tropical system over the central Atlantic. There are still regions of decent SSTs out there east of Bermuda and south of the Azores. Upper tropospheric temperatures are getting colder, and it doesn't take much beyond 26-27°C SSTs to drive instability with a TC reorganizing out of a cutoff trough. We see a decent system like that every other year in November. I do not forsee any more ACE machines like Melissa, however.

I would expect the mountainous terrain of Eastern Cuba to rip up the low-level vorticity quite a bit here. Might not drop below hurricane intensity, but that combined with increasing shear, I doubt Melissa will be able to regain major status again prior to any impact on Bermuda.

The northern eyewall is now onshore.

Any thoughts on surge threat for Santiago de Cuba? I looked the city up on Google street view, there are some photo spheres showing that part of the colonial heart is just a few feet above the bay there. 

Hopefully, they will stay out of the southeastern quadrant of the eyewall. Based on radar motion, they should miss it to their west. The terrain at the coast is rather rugged west of Santiago, so surge isn't as much a problem there. But Santiago proper has the harbor and low-lying area. They probably will get some surge, but not as bad as actually taking a hit from within eyewall. Melissa is also moving at a pretty decent clip now, so hopefully inland flooding off of the higher elevations won't compound the issue.

2:00 AM EDT Wed Oct 29
Location: 19.7°N 76.4°W
Moving: NE at 10 mph
Min pressure: 952 mb
Max sustained: 125 mph
 

Dropped a category, I see. I figured they'd at least hold at a 4 since the satellite appearance had recovered this evening. But a few knots difference is paltry.

Trying to adjust and pinpoint motion to landfall. Barring any wobbles, it looks like the center will cross somewhere directly between Chivrico and Santiago. There is a small community on route 20 located there with an icon on the coast named Playa Aserradero. Not sure if anyone is familiar with the coastal region there.

Not sure how much time it has left, but it’s really trying to intensify.

Perhaps two to three hours to landfall based on radar.

VHT bursting in the northern eyewall.

Worried about Santiago de Cuba. Second largest city in the country.

Chivrico is a town that might get a direct hit. It's west of Santiago on coastal route 20. It's located at -76.4 W and that looks about where the eye will come ashore. Santiago should be just far enough east to stay out of the eyewall.

Fortunately, the location around Chivrico is not as prone to surge. Melissa will be mostly a wind event and hopefully it's gaining enough forward speed to mitigate flash flooding from torrential rain.

Impressive.

Really impressed by how well Melissa's mid level vortex held together and how fast the eyewall is reorganizing. It's not got a lot of time before landfall in Cuba, but it has incredible upper level support and obviously high SSTs to reintensify some in short order. At least maintain current intensity. Should be a Category 4 strike.

Can't say I've seen a storm meandering/ sit in the same region for days, to then have the ability to keep strengthening, those waters must be very warm fairly deep down? But really familiar with that part of the world climate etc

Yes. Very warm deep down. *Barry White voice*.... But seriously, deepest 26°C isotherm in the Atlantic is consistently in the western Caribbean around Jamaica and the Caymans.

I can't post an image right now, but the low-level cloud swirl pattern near the surface inside the eye of Melissa right now is very indicative of multiple (at least five or six) large mesovorticies rotating around the eye. If that persists through landfall, pretty much any location inside the eyewall, regardless of quadrant, is going to get wrecked.

I'm sure Josh or another chaser has a handheld barometer onsite. If so, we could have ground truth of the strongest or 2nd strongest landfall ever in the Atlantic basin. At least in recorded history.

Josh has instruments staged.