Even in a decade marked by an unprecedented number of "monster" storms, Melissa stood out as a freak of nature. The hurricane defied multiple atmospheric forces that usually weaken such systems and kept strengthening right up to landfall — to the astonishment of meteorologists tracking it.
"This was a remarkable, just a beast of a storm," said Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University.
Defying every rule in the book
Most hurricanes weaken after reaching peak intensity. Melissa did the opposite. It underwent two rounds of extreme rapid intensification — a process where wind speeds jump by at least 93 km/h within 24 hours.
Melissa surged by about 113 km/h in just one day, and then did it again, climbing to 282 km/h before its final push to 298 km/h at landfall.
"It's extraordinary," said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane expert at the University of Miami. "You don't often see storms pull that off — not once, let alone twice."
At landfall, Melissa's pressure levels tied the deadly 1935 Labor Day storm in Florida, one of the most intense hurricanes ever recorded. Its top wind speeds matched those of Hurricane Dorian in 2019.
A storm that ignored physics
Under normal conditions, hurricanes go through what's known as an eyewall replacement cycle — when the storm's core reorganizes, temporarily weakening it. Melissa showed early signs of entering such a cycle, McNoldy said, "but it never did."
Even more astonishingly, Melissa hovered just off the coast of mountainous Jamaica before landfall — a situation that usually disrupts a storm's structure.
"It was right next to a big mountainous island, and it didn't even notice it was there," McNoldy said.
Warm ocean water fuels hurricanes. Normally, when a storm lingers over one area, it churns up cooler water from below, cutting off its energy supply. But Melissa never lost access to heat.
"It's wild how easily it just kept venting," said Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at Climate Central, a nonprofit science and journalism group. "There was so much warm water — and so deep — that it could just keep going."
Supercharged by a superheated ocean
Satellite data showed that the sea surface under Melissa was up to 2°C warmer than average for the season. Climate Central's analysis found that such ocean temperatures were 500 to 700 times more likely to occur because of human-caused climate change.
Woods Placky described watching the storm's intensification in real time:
"You'd see the updates come in and your stomach would drop — 175 miles per hour, then 185. It was an explosion."
Between five consecutive six-hour periods, Melissa maintained extreme rapid intensification — an almost unheard-of feat in meteorology.
A pattern of stronger storms
A review by the Associated Press of 125 years of hurricane data found that the number of Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes has surged sharply. Since 2016, 13 Category 5 storms have formed — including three this year alone. Nearly a third of all Category 5 storms on record have occurred in the past decade.
While early records may be incomplete due to limited observation technology, the trend is clear, said Klotzbach and McNoldy: the Atlantic is producing stronger, faster-growing storms in a warming climate.
Climate scientists caution that this doesn't necessarily mean more storms overall, but rather a greater share of the most powerful ones.
"We're seeing a direct connection between ocean heat and storm intensity," said Woods Placky. "When hurricanes pass over these exceptionally warm waters, they have more fuel — and we're seeing them push to entirely new levels."