Hurricane Melissa, which devastated western Jamaica as one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded, briefly restrengthened between Jamaica and Cuba late Tuesday before making a second landfall shortly after 3 a.m. ET Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane about 40 miles west of Santiago de Cuba – the country’s second most populous city – in eastern Cuba.
With estimated winds of 120 mph at second landfall, Melissa was the strongest hurricane to hit eastern Cuba since Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
Eastern Cuba’s mountainous terrain weakened Melissa to a Category 2 hurricane as it emerged off the island’s northern coast by late Wednesday morning.
Melissa will pass through the southeastern Bahamas during the afternoon and evening hours on Wednesday, bringing hurricane conditions (winds of 74 mph or stronger) to places like Long Island, Crooked Island, Rum Cay, and San Salvador Island.
Turks and Caicos will be on Melissa’s eastern edge and winds today will stay below hurricane strength as Melissa’s center passes about 150 to 175 miles to their west.
Melissa will accelerate northeastward and away from the Bahamas late Wednesday and on Thursday.
On its current forecast track, the center of Melissa is expected to pass just west of Bermuda by late Thursday or during the pre-dawn hours Friday as a Category 1 or 2 hurricane. Bermuda is under a Hurricane Warning for the expectation of hurricane conditions as Melissa makes its closest approach.
Melissa will quickly morph into an extratropical storm after racing past Bermuda on Friday and east of Atlantic Canada early Saturday on a path out to sea.
Melissa a remarkably long-lived Category 5
Perhaps most noteworthy about Melissa’s ascent to one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record was its resistance to the internal processes that typically limit the time hurricanes spend at ultra-strong Category 5 status.
Melissa only temporarily paused or slowed its strengthening at times during its four-day rise to the top of the recordbooks, but never did it substantively weaken during that period.
Most major (Category 3 or stronger) hurricanes undergo at least one eyewall replacement cycle during their lifetimes – especially high-end Category 4 and 5 hurricanes like Melissa – that physically alters the character and structure of the hurricane, usually forcing winds to at least temporarily weaken.
Based on all available real-time data, Melissa never formed a secondary eyewall – an outer ring of strong storms – that could start the eyewall replacement process and starve its inner core of life-sustaining inflow, countering its intensification.
The result was one of the longest-lived Category 5 hurricanes on record, and the longest-lived Category 5 hurricane since Irma in 2017, the recordholder for durable Category 5s.
No development threats behind Melissa
As we mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, the Atlantic may be headed into hibernation after Melissa.
Our long-range models show an increasingly hostile winter-like pattern settling over much of the Atlantic in the coming weeks and no candidates to speak of for the first half of November.
The hurricane season officially ends November 30th.
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