Hurricane Melissa has become “the most powerful hurricane ever to make a direct strike on Jamaica.”
Across the Atlantic, Melissa made history with record-breaking strength. It “matched the record for the strongest hurricane to make landfall anywhere in the Atlantic basin,” producing sustained winds of 185 mph. Its central pressure measured 892 mb, equaling the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane as “the most intense landfalling storm on record.”
Hurricane Hunter aircraft flying into the storm recorded a wind gust of 252 mph just above the ocean surface before landfall — an extraordinary finding.
This gust was “only slightly below the world record for the highest wind gust ever documented in a tropical cyclone,” which was 253 mph during Cyclone Olivia’s impact on Western Australia in 1996.
Melissa’s combination of record winds, pressure, and destructive power has placed it among the most extreme hurricanes ever observed in the Atlantic.
