Hurricane Melissa hammered the Caribbean over the last few days. It's left death and destruction in its wake and communities are facing daunting recoveries. By the time the Category 5 storm made landfall in Jamaica, it was one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean.
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"About a week and a half ago, we could see a lot of signals in the models and also in the observations of the Caribbean that there were some favorable signals for a storm to develop," said research scientist Levi Silvers at Colorado State University.
Silvers co-authored CSU's 2025 hurricane report - yes, that's right, a landlocked institution studies hurricanes.
CSU started hurricane research in the 1980s, and its annual report is widely viewed and distributed. This year's report anticipated a storm in the Caribbean had the potential to explode because of warm sea waters.
"That was just an emergency waiting to happen," Silvers said. "The sea surface temperature in the Caribbean has just been extremely warm all year."
He said that warmth, coupled with the right wind conditions, would cause a storm to "take off."
As Melissa hit Jamaica on Tuesday, Silvers said the onslaught of rain posed the biggest threat, specifically because Melissa was so slow moving.
“This storm has almost been sitting still. It's moving about five miles per hour, so the rain is just continuing and continuing and continuing," he said. And the wind - which clocked in at 185 miles per hour - would mean even more catastrophic damage.
Damage assessments and recovery efforts are underway in the Caribbean. The Associated Press reports that at least 25 people were killed in Haiti and destruction is widespread in Jamaica.
