October 27, 2025
2 min learn
With Melissa, 2025 Turns into Solely the Second Season with Extra Than Two Class 5 Hurricanes
That is solely the second time we’ve had greater than two Class 5 storms in a single Atlantic hurricane season
Hurricane Melissa swirls within the Caribbean Sea, as seen by the GOES-19 climate satellite tv for pc operated by the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Cooperative Institute for Analysis within the Environment, Colorado State College/Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Because it bears down on Jamaica, Hurricane Melissa has turn into the third Class 5 storm of the 2025 Atlantic season—simply the second season on report to ever see greater than two Class 5 hurricanes.
The one different Atlantic season to attain this feat was the blockbuster certainly one of 2005, which featured 4 Class 5 storms: Emily, Katrina, Rita and Wilma.
Hurricanes are categorized on the Saffir-Simpson scale primarily based on their wind speeds: a storm turns into a Class 1 when its winds attain 74 miles per hour and a Class 5 once they attain 157 mph.
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Class 5 storms are uncommon—Melissa is barely the forty fifth Class 5 within the Atlantic Ocean on report since 1851. These storms require an ideal alignment of prodigious obtainable power and conducive atmospheric situations to achieve and maintain such highly effective wind speeds.
READ MORE: Hurricane Science Has a Lot of Jargon—Right here’s What It All Means
Melissa was capable of attain its 175-mph most wind velocity by making the most of exceptionally heat waters within the Caribbean Sea. It underwent excessive fast intensification, strengthening from a 70-mph tropical storm final Saturday morning to a 140-mph Class 4 hurricane on Sunday—twice the speed of the official threshold of fast intensification. (The storm strengthened additional in a while Sunday and once more on Monday.) That stage of strengthening “is on the fringes of what’s ever been noticed within the Atlantic basin,” wrote meteorologist Michael Lowry on his weblog.
With rising ocean temperatures, extra storms are anticipated to bear such fast intensification and to accentuate at sooner charges. In a altering local weather, hurricanes are additionally turning into stronger general—one research discovered that local weather change amplified the winds of each hurricane in 2024. That development means extra storms will attain the upper classes than they used to. A 2020 research, as an example, discovered that the proportion of tropical cyclones that attain Class 3 or increased has already grown in latest many years.
There have been seven Class 5 storms prior to now three years and 13 prior to now decade, wrote climate author Dennis Mersereau on Bluesky.
Editor’s Word (10/27/25): This text was edited after posting to replace Hurricane Melissa’s wind velocity.
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