At least 56 people have died in Jamaica and Haiti after Hurricane Melissa swept across the Greater Antilles between 25 and 29 October 2025. The storm first appeared as a tropical depression off the coast of West Africa around 16 October, moving across the Atlantic Ocean, then passing through the Windward Islands on 19 October, before continuing to move westwards across the Caribbean Sea. The weather system began to intensify on 21 October, provoking meteorologists to give it the name Tropical Storm Melissa. On 25 October it began to intensify further, becoming a Category 5 storm early on 27 October. At the same time it changed its direction of movement sweeping northward towards Jamaica, where it made landfall near New Hope about midday on 28 October.
Hurricane Melissa reached Jamaica as the joint most intense Hurricane ever to make land, tying with the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 in having a pressure of only 892 millibars, and a maximum recorded windspeed of 406 km per hour - the highest ever recorded for a storm on Earth. Flooding was reported in the town of Old Harbour ahead of the storm, with much of the parish of Saint Elizabeth under water when it hit. Several villages in the parish are described as being obliterated by the combination of flood waters and high winds, as was the town of Mandeville in neighbouring Manchester Parish. Flooding was also reported in Montego Bay and Kingston, buildings collapsed in Falmouth, and a landslide was reported in Gordon Town. At least 19 people died on the island, including eight in Saint Elizabeth Parish, two (including an infant) in Saint James Parish, nine in Westemoreland Parish, and a pregnant woman in Petersfield.
From Jamaica, the storm moved northward to Cuba, where it caused widespread flooding and damage to buildings in Santiago de Cuba Province, although there are no reports of any fatalities there. However, high rainfall associated with the the storm caused several rivers to bust their banks in neighbouring Haiti, where at least 30 people have died and about 20 more are still missing. Four people are also reported to have died in the Dominican Republic, again due to flooding.
Tropical storms are caused by the warming effect of the Sun over tropical seas. As the air warms it expands, causing a drop in air pressure, and rises, causing air from outside the area to rush in to replace it. If this happens over a sufficiently wide area then the inrushing winds will be affected by centrifugal forces caused by the Earth's rotation (the Coriolis effect). This means that winds will be deflected clockwise in the northern hemisphere and anti-clockwise in the southern hemisphere, eventually creating a large, rotating Tropical Storm. They have different names in different parts of the world, with those in the northwest Atlantic and eastern Pacific being referred to as hurricanes.
Despite the obvious danger of winds of this speed, which can physically blow people, and other large objects, away as well as damaging buildings and uprooting trees, the real danger from these storms comes from the flooding they bring. Each drop millibar drop in air-pressure leads to an approximate 1 cm rise in sea level, with big tropical storms capable of causing a storm surge of several meters. This is always accompanied by heavy rainfall, since warm air over the ocean leads to evaporation of sea water, which is then carried with the storm. These combined often lead to catastrophic flooding in areas hit by tropical storms.
Hurricane Melissa was the thirteenth named storm in the tropical Atlantic in 2025, the fifth storm to be elevated to hurricane status, and the third Category 5 hurricane of the season. It was also the strongest tropical storm measured anywhere on Earth in 2025, the joint most powerful storm ever to have made land, and produced the highest windspeed ever recorded from a storm on Earth. The size and frequency of such storms is directly linked to the temperature of the sea and the air above it, with rising global temperatures subsequently fuelling more and larger storms, and other extreme weather events in the Caribbean and other tropical regions.
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