Major Hurricane Melissa - 892mb - 185mph Jamaica landfall

[WolfStock1]

16 hours ago, Hotair said:

And add to the fact that this isn’t a large country with thousands of roofing companies willing to travel to a disaster area.  The workforce there is limited as are the tools (cranes, materials, etc).  Many of those places will not be rebuilt for at least 3 years or longer.   
 

Now also consider that the percentage of homes covered by insurance in Jamaica is roughly under 5%.   

 

Yeah very sad situation there; and good points about being an island.   Saving grace perhaps is that the most-built areas of the island - around Kingston - was not as hard hit.   But yeah as you say it's not like Katrina etc. where people can be driving there from other states to help with cleanup and rebuild; it's a much harder thing on an island like that, even for people that have a vested interest.

I would encourage everyone to donate some $ - there are already charities collecting funds for use for Jamaica.

[Newman]

Impacts in St. Johns/SE Canada from Melissa will largely depend on how far west it can get. The strongest winds will likely remain on the east side of the storm, so a miss east would keep any hurricane force gusts off the coast, though TS wind gusts would still be certain in areas

[Wannabehippie]

50 minutes ago, NorthHillsWx said:

Looks like the storm might come close to major again. Really getting its act together this morning on both satellite and recon 

I am not sure it will, due to the fact that the system, wind field will expand as it moves north, making it harder to get back to major status. Melissa's lowest pressure is 965mb at the moment.

[GaWx]

 Live feed from chaser Jeff P. is linked at the bottom. 

 He’s been stationed in a house in Santa Cruz (~20 miles inland and ~15 miles W of worst wind damage. Yesterday, he/his host tried to drive to Black River but could go only a couple of miles west to Lacovia due to roads that were washed out, had big potholes, had deep mud from the prior 4-6+ feet of extreme rainfall induced flooding/landslides coming off the nearby ridges, and had debris such as trees and utility poles (some made of concrete!) blocking the road. So, they kept having to turnaround and try different routes to no avail and thus went back to home base. Here’s a link to the recording of that 2 hr, 51 min never a dull moment live feed from yesterday (this isn’t live):

 
————————
 In today’s (LIVE) feed, it looks like they took a different route initially to the E and SE (i.e. further away from the worst hit area) instead of W. Then they turned back W further S (only couple of miles from coast). They went W through Junction (15 miles SSE of Santa Cruz), Bull Savanna, and Flagaman. They were temporarily stopped at Pedro Cross, just a few miles E of Treasure Beach, because the road was being cleared. They resumed a NW course approaching Newell.

 LIVE feed:

 

Edit: they’re now at Wally Wash Pond (11:33AM EDT) moving NW just a few miles SE of Black River.

[nycwinter]

looked like convection fully wrapped around the center and then it changed maybe its starting to become post tropical.

[olafminesaw]

5 minutes ago, nycwinter said:

looked like convection fully wrapped around the center and then it changed maybe its starting to become post tropical.

It's trying but the new eyewall is huge an unsymmetrical, so I think it's unlikely to strengthen any unless the eye gets smaller. Don't think that will happen before it starts to become more post-tropical 

[Jtm12180]

48 minutes ago, GaWx said:

 Live feed from chaser Jeff P. is linked at the bottom. 

 He’s been stationed in a house in Santa Cruz (~20 miles inland and ~15 miles W of worst wind damage. Yesterday, he/his host tried to drive to Black River but could go only a couple of miles west to Lacovia due to roads that were washed out, had big potholes, had deep mud from the prior 4-6+ feet of extreme rainfall induced flooding/landslides coming off the nearby ridges, and had debris such as trees and utility poles (some made of concrete!) blocking the road. So, they kept having to turnaround and try different routes to no avail and thus went back to home base. Here’s a link to the recording of that 2 hr, 51 min never a dull moment live feed from yesterday (this isn’t live):

 
————————
 In today’s (LIVE) feed, it looks like they took a different route initially to the E and SE (i.e. further away from the worst hit area) instead of W. Then they turned back W further S (only couple of miles from coast). They went W through Junction (15 miles SSE of Santa Cruz), Bull Savanna, and Flagaman. They were temporarily stopped at Pedro Cross, just a few miles E of Treasure Beach, because the road was being cleared. They resumed a NW course approaching Newell.

 LIVE feed:

 

Edit: they’re now at Wally Wash Pond (11:33AM EDT) moving NW just a few miles SE of Black River.

I was getting on here to share this feed…good thinking

 

Tip: take blood pressure meds first before watching jeff live…hahaha 

[WEATHER53]

12 hours ago, GaWx said:

 

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

[Windspeed]

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).

[GaWx]

4 hours ago, Jtm12180 said:

I was getting on here to share this feed…good thinking

 

Tip: take blood pressure meds first before watching jeff live…hahaha 

 Great advice!

 For anyone interested, that last YouTube link is no longer to a livestream.

Here’s an updated storm-chaser Jeff P. (with his host) livestream from near Ground Zero. This is from decimated Black River on the coast. Jeff was just saying they need helicopters there ASAP because there are a whole lot of folks who are injured and need to be airlifted to a hospital.

 Edit: He just quoted a Reuters reporter he just saw who called this a “humanitarian crisis”.

Edit 4:25PM: New live-stream Jeff P. link: they’re now driving N out of the devastated Black River:

 

[Wannabehippie]

Forward speed really picking up now.

2:00 PM EDT Thu Oct 30
Location: 29.0°N 70.9°W
Moving: NE at 30 mph
Min pressure: 964 mb
Max sustained: 105 mph

[Krs4Lfe]

I wonder what the observations will be like from east Newfoundland tomorrow night, and Saturday, looks like it’ll have just transitioned to a post-tropical, hurricane force low pressure by then. 

[Wannabehippie]

Melissa is starting to expand in size, which is to be expected as it increases in latitude. But is it also starting to interact with the system affecting the northeast US right now as well?

blob:https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/1f3f0d59-f4f3-4f1e-85b0-d28463901100

 

[Kevin Reilly]

8 hours ago, WEATHER53 said:

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

I would say past 100 Mph.  That's incredible video!  Most amazing to me was now calm the people were there amazing people of Jamaica!

[Coach McGuirk]

My mom said the death toll is only 3 people.  I said that has to go up as they start actually going through the rubble.

[Floydbuster]

 

[GaWx]

3 hours ago, Coach McGuirk said:

My mom said the death toll is only 3 people.  I said that has to go up as they start actually going through the rubble.

It has risen from 3 to 19 in Jamaica.

[TriPol]

Hats off to Jamaica for taking Melissa on the chin like that. There aren’t hundreds or thousands dead like I feared. 

[Windspeed]

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.

[TheDreamTraveler]

I'd mark this down as another win for some of the AI models as well. They not only guessed the track better when models like the GFS, ICON and UKMET failed spectacularly but they also guessed the insane low pressure below 900mb which many didn't believe it would get to. So glad we finally have something else to use because the GFS has just been a mess the past 5 years. But really this was one of the hardest forecasts we've had in a while but the AI models really nailed it despite the fact.

[dan11295]

Declared extratropical at 11 am. Safe to say I don't think we will be seeing the name Melissa again.

[WxWatcher007]

2 hours ago, dan11295 said:

Declared extratropical at 11 am. Safe to say I don't think we will be seeing the name Melissa again.

Incredible that the season—an extraordinarily condensed one—ended with possibly the strongest Atlantic landfall in recorded history. 

[TheClimateChanger]

 

[gallopinggertie]

Preliminary damage estimates are $7.7 billion in Jamaica, which would be more than a third of their annual GDP. I’m sure we will see that number change a lot, but still. 

[olafminesaw]

28 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Incredible that the season—an extraordinarily condensed one—ended with possibly the strongest Atlantic landfall in recorded history. 

Likely will be the first season since 2015 without a land falling US hurricane. Puts an exclamation point on the "all it takes is one" rule 

[olafminesaw]

7 minutes ago, gallopinggertie said:

Preliminary damage estimates are $7.7 billion in Jamaica, which would be more than a third of their annual GDP. I’m sure we will see that number change a lot, but still. 

That's massive. As a point of reference, Katrina was about 10% of GDP at the time. Unfortunately the resort industry will be severely affected, which will take time to recover. 

[GaWx]

 Here are before and after SSTs to see how much Melissa cooled the ocean on and near its track:

10/24/25:

 

10/30/25:

 

 So, it cooled only ~1C/2F around Jamaica/E Cuba (from slightly over 30C to near or slightly over 29C). Unfortunately, that wasn’t nearly enough to keep Melissa from exploding. Much of the area around the Bahamas also cooled some (perhaps ~0.5C/1F) but the full cooling may have to wait til the 10/31 SST map. Also, Melissa wasn’t as strong and was moving much more quickly through the Bahamas thus likely meaning less cooling influence.

 In contrast, note that most of the Gulf and far W Caribbean cooled hardly at all, if any, as they were too far west to be cooled by Melissa.

[WolfStock1]

14 hours ago, TriPol said:

Hats off to Jamaica for taking Melissa on the chin like that. There aren’t hundreds or thousands dead like I feared. 

 

Unfortunately the end toll will probably come in that high.   It's early.

Saving grace is they had lots of warning.   However unlike the US most people just don't have the ability to evacuate, at least in terms of going somewhere hundreds of miles away in another state that's safe.