One of the most destructive Caribbean hurricanes on record
Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on 28 October 2025 as a Category 5 hurricane with 185 mph (295 km/h) sustained winds and a central pressure under 900 mb, and is among the strongest Atlantic Hurricanes on record (NHC, 2025a; AP News, 2025a). Moving slowly across the island, Melissa unleashed almost 500mm of rainfall in Jamaica from 26-28 October (Jupiter, 2025) and a storm surge up to 4 m along Jamaica’s south coast (Science Media Centre, 2025).
The storm caused catastrophic wind damage, widespread flooding, and landslides, leaving extensive infrastructure damage and power loss. After crossing Jamaica, Melissa weakened to Category 3 before striking southeast Cuba, bringing further heavy rain and coastal inundation. Its combination of record intensity, slow motion, and compound wind–flood–surge impacts makes Melissa one of the most severe Caribbean hurricanes in recent history.
Formation and meteorology
Hurricane Melissa formed from a tropical wave, a westward-moving low-pressure disturbance from Africa, that entered the Caribbean on 21 October 2025 and quickly strengthened into a tropical storm (NHC, 2025a). Weak steering currents allowed the system to drift slowly, maintaining deep convection over exceptionally warm waters (≈ 30°C, 2–3 °C above normal) that fuelled rapid intensification (AP News, 2025b).
Between 26 and 27 October, Melissa intensified explosively into a Category 5 hurricane, with 185 mph (295 km/h) sustained winds and a central pressure of 892 mb before striking Jamaica (NHC, 2025a). Melissa was the joint strongest Atlantic landfall on record (AP News, 2025a). Its slow forward speed, around 5 mph (8 km/h), prolonged extreme winds and rainfall across the island (The Guardian, 2025a).
Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on 28 October (British Red Cross, 2025) as a category 5 hurricane (The Guardian, 2025b). After leaving a path of destruction upon crossing the island, Melissa weakened to Category 3 strength before making a second landfall in southeast Cuba on 29 October (CBS News, 2025a). Despite reducing in intensity, Cuba was still hit with rainfall of up to 500mm (20 inches), possibly reaching over 600mm (25 inches) in the mountains, whilst also being hit by wind speeds of 120 mph (190 km/h) (The Guardian, 2025b).
Although not directly in Melissa’s path, Haiti was subject to severe rainfall, causing flooding and landslides (The Guardian, 2025b). After landfall in Cuba, the storm then tracked northeast across the Bahamas, bringing hurricane-force gusts and flooding to low-lying islands (The Independent, 2025), before passing just north of Bermuda on 31 October as a Category 1 hurricane, causing strong winds, heavy surf and minor power outages (The Royal Gazette, 2025). Melissa is now moving into the open North Atlantic and beginning its extratropical transition.
Impacts
Hurricane Melissa has caused widespread devastation across the Caribbean, with Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, the Bahamas, and Bermuda all affected. The storm’s combination of destructive winds, torrential rainfall, and storm surge resulted in severe damage to housing, infrastructure, and livelihoods. Early assessments indicate dozens of fatalities across the region and hundreds of thousands displaced or without power. Economic losses are estimated at USD $48-52 billion, making Melissa one of the most damaging hurricanes ever recorded in the Caribbean (Tampa Free Press, 2025).
Jamaica
Melissa struck Jamaica on 28 October 2025 near New Hope, in the southwest of the country. It was the strongest hurricane ever recorded to make landfall on the island, causing widespread destruction across the western and central regions. At the height of the storm, around 77% of the island was without electricity (CNN Weather, 2025), and communications were severely disrupted. The Government of Jamaica confirmed at least seven fatalities (The Guardian, 2025b), though the figure may rise as assessments continue.
More than 25,000 people took refuge in emergency shelters (Reuters, 2025a). Widespread flooding and landslides blocked key roads, hampering relief operations. Critical infrastructure suffered extensive damage. Four hospitals were affected, including Black River Hospital, which lost power and required the evacuation of 75 patients (BBC News, 2025b; The Guardian, 2025b). The island’s tourism, agriculture, and public infrastructure sectors suffered extensive losses, and early estimates placed total economic damage at around USD $40 billion (BBC News, 2025b; AccuWeather, 2025).
Cuba
Melissa made a second landfall in southeastern Cuba on 29 October, striking Granma and Santiago de Cuba provinces as a Category 3 hurricane. Authorities evacuated more than 700,000 people ahead of impact (Financial Times, 2025a; Reuters, 2025a). Despite the storm’s weakening, wind gusts up to 190 km/h (120 mph) and rainfall exceeding 500mm were recorded in mountainous areas (The Guardian, 2025b). Significant damage was reported to homes, roads, and the national electricity grid, and agricultural production in the east of the country sustained heavy losses. The event has compounded Cuba’s pre-existing economic challenges, including chronic fuel shortages and limited access to building materials, which may prolong recovery efforts.
Haiti
Although Melissa did not make landfall in Haiti, its outer rainbands produced intense rainfall and flash flooding across the south and west of the country. Rivers overflowed near Petit-Goâve, triggering landslides and widespread inundation that killed at least 25 people, including ten children, and left ten others missing (Financial Times, 2025a; Reuters, 2025a). Thousands of people were displaced and forced into temporary shelters as homes and infrastructure were washed away. The humanitarian situation remains critical, with access to clean water, food, and medical assistance constrained by damaged transport routes and pre-existing vulnerabilities.
The Bahamas
Melissa passed through the southeastern Bahamas late on 30 October, producing hurricane-force gusts, storm surge, and coastal flooding on several low-lying islands (The Independent, 2025). Winds of up to 120 km/h (75 mph) were recorded, and emergency teams responded to downed power lines and localized flooding. Damage assessments are ongoing, but impacts appear less severe than in Jamaica and Cuba.
Regional Caribbean impacts
Across the wider region, Melissa’s slow movement and passage over anomalously warm seas contributed to rapid intensification (WUSF, 2025). This created damaging winds and storm surge hazards throughout the northern Caribbean, leading to regional disruptions in tourism, shipping, and supply chains. The storm’s extreme strength has been linked to unusually warm Atlantic waters, underscoring concerns about the influence of climate change on tropical cyclone intensity (AP News, 2025a).
The full scale of Melissa’s destruction remains uncertain as assessments continue in remote and inaccessible areas (Washington Post, 2025). Early estimates, such as the USD $40 billion damage figure for Jamaica, are expected to evolve as data from the housing, infrastructure, and business sectors are consolidated. The humanitarian toll in Haiti may also rise as additional reports of casualties and displacement emerge. Across the Caribbean, the event has exposed vulnerabilities in energy, housing, and coastal protection systems and highlighted the increasing challenge of responding to rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones in a warming climate. Overall, Hurricane Melissa stands as one of the most destructive events of the 2025 Atlantic season, leaving a trail of structural devastation, regional economic disruption, and long-term recovery needs.
Parametric insurance and catastrophe bonds
The financial and insurance response to Hurricane Melissa is expected to be substantial, reflecting the growing role of parametric insurance and catastrophe bonds in regional resilience.
Jamaica’s sovereign catastrophe bond, issued in 2024 through the World Bank’s IBRD CAR program, is expected to trigger following Melissa’s record-breaking landfall. Early analysis suggests that wind speed and pressure parameters likely exceeded thresholds, potentially activating the bond’s maximum payout of USD $150 million (Financial Times, 2025b; Artemis BM, 2025). Investor reports indicate market pricing had already anticipated a full or near-full loss shortly after landfall.
In addition, Jamaica’s Tropical Cyclone and Excess Rainfall policies with the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF SPC) have now been formally triggered. CCRIF confirmed a record parametric payout of USD $70.8 million to Jamaica (CCRIF SPC, 2025). This payout demonstrates the facility’s rapid-disbursement capacity and its importance in providing immediate liquidity to support early recovery and fiscal stability.
Elsewhere in the region, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas all maintain CCRIF coverage for tropical cyclones and excess rainfall. Given Melissa’s regional reach, modelled triggers are possible across multiple jurisdictions. The Bahamas, for example, received combined Tropical Cyclone and Excess Rainfall payouts totalling USD $12.8 million following Hurricane Dorian in 2019 (CCRIF SPC, 2020; 2024c). Other notable activations include USD $7.2 million to Barbados after Hurricane Elsa (2021), USD $3.4 million to Saint Lucia after Tropical Storm Matthew (2016), and multiple payouts to Dominica, including USD $19.3 million after Hurricane Maria (2017) (CCRIF SPC, 2018; 2021). More recently, Hurricane Beryl (2024) triggered payouts to Jamaica, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago (CCRIF SPC, 2024b).
CCRIF’s performance in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa reinforces its role as a cornerstone of the Caribbean’s disaster-risk-financing framework, providing rapid liquidity to governments within days of a catastrophe. In combination with Jamaica’s catastrophe-bond coverage, CCRIF and other parametric tools illustrate the evolution of Caribbean disaster financing from reactive relief to proactive resilience, offering rapid fiscal liquidity that accelerates recovery and underpins sustainable reconstruction.
Historical context
The Caribbean has a long and well-documented history of tropical cyclone impacts, with Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti and the Bahamas among the most frequently affected nations. These countries share exposure to extreme wind, rainfall, and storm-surge hazards driven by their location along major Atlantic hurricane tracks. While strong tropical systems are common, direct landfalls by Category 4 or 5 hurricanes remain rare for many of these islands.
Jamaica’s steep terrain and low-lying southern plains make it highly susceptible to flash flooding, landslides and coastal inundation (Reconstruction & Mitigation Programs in Jamaica, 2020). Cuba’s southern coast has repeatedly faced severe hurricane impacts, including Hurricanes Michelle (2001) and Irma (2017), which caused widespread wind and surge damage. Haiti’s mountainous topography and limited drainage have amplified losses from storms such as Jeanne (2004) and Matthew (2016), while the Bahamas remain among the region’s most exposed, suffering catastrophic destruction from Hurricane Dorian (2019).
These events highlight the recurring vulnerability of Caribbean nations to extreme rainfall, storm surge, and high winds, and the potential for compound hazards that amplify humanitarian and economic impacts. Hurricane Melissa represents a step change in hazard magnitude, combining record wind speeds, slow forward motion, and exceptional rainfall totals, and is poised to become one of the most significant multi-country hurricane events in the region’s modern history.
2025 Atlantic hurricane season
The 2025 North Atlantic hurricane season, running from 1 June to 30 November, has been above average in intensity but relatively low in overall impact, owing to a lack of major landfalls. Early forecasts from NOAA (2025) predicted heightened tropical cyclone activity, driven by record warm sea-surface temperatures, a weakened La Niña, and generally favourable atmospheric conditions across the Atlantic basin (WMO, 2025).
By late October, the basin has produced 13 named storms (NHC, 2025b), including five hurricanes, of which four reached major hurricane status (Category 3 or higher). The Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index, a measure of storm frequency, duration, and intensity, was over 120, placing the season above the 1991–2020 average (CSU, 2025). Despite this elevated activity, most storms tracked over open ocean or weakened before reaching land, limiting widespread damage across the Americas and Caribbean.
The first named storm, Tropical Storm Andrea, formed on 23 June, marking one of the latest starts to an Atlantic season in over a decade (NHC, 2025b). After a lull during the typical mid-season peak in August, activity surged in September and October with several intense hurricanes, including Erin, Humberto, and Melissa. Both Erin and Humberto briefly reached Category 5 intensity, reflecting the exceptional thermodynamic environment across the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean.
While several storms remained over open ocean, the Caribbean region has seen heightened risk, as warm waters and weak steering currents encouraged slow-moving, high-intensity systems (WMO, 2025). This pattern culminated in Hurricane Melissa, which rapidly intensified in the central Caribbean before making landfall in Jamaica as a Category 5 hurricane, the most powerful storm to strike the island in recorded history (NHC, 2025b).
The 2025 season underscores the increasing prevalence of rapid intensification events and the compounding hazards of wind, surge, and extreme rainfall (NOAA, 2025; WMO, 2025). These factors are central to understanding the scale of impacts expected from Hurricane Melissa and will be key considerations in JBA’s subsequent hazard analysis and post-event modelling.
Hurricane Melissa’s record-breaking strength and widespread impacts make it a defining event of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, underscoring the growing influence of a warming climate in driving wind, flood, and surge losses. Through advanced catastrophe modelling and parametric insurance expertise, JBA Risk Management helps organisations build resilience and enhance preparedness for the next generation of extreme events.
