{"id":67581,"date":"2025-10-26T23:21:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T23:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=67581"},"modified":"2025-10-27T23:21:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T23:21:27","slug":"melissa-becomes-a-hurricane-southeast-of-jamaica-then-rapidly-intensifies-to-a-category-4-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/67581","title":{"rendered":"Melissa becomes a Hurricane southeast of Jamaica, then rapidly intensifies to a Category 5 storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

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1-minute GOES-19 Infrared images with plots of GLM Flash Points, from 1201 UTC on 25 October to 0300 UTC on 26 October [click to play MP4 animation]<\/p><\/div>1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East)<\/em>\u00a0Infrared images (above)<\/strong><\/em> showed Tropical Storm Melissa in the Caribbean Sea as it began to rapidly intensify during the afternoon and evening hours on 25 October 2025 — reaching Category 1 intensity at 1800 UTC on 25 October and Category 3 intensity at 0300 UTC on 26 October. A series of convective bursts (exhibiting cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures as cold as -90 to -96C, denoted by darker shades of purple) rotated around the storm center — and GLM Flash Points highlighted intermittent lightning activity within some of those convective bursts. Some semblance of a ragged eye occasionally appeared as Melissa neared and attained Category 3 intensity, but an eye was never well organized in the infrared imagery.<\/p>\n

Melissa then reached Category 4 intensity south of Jamaica at 1200 UTC on 26 October — and by that time the eye was well defined in both Infrared and Visible imagery (below)<\/strong><\/em>. Low-altitude mesovortices were apparent within the eye in the Visible images.<\/p>\n

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1-minute GOES-19 Infrared images with plots of GLM Flash Points, from 1200 -2100 UTC on 26 October [click to play MP4 animation]<\/p><\/div>\n

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1-minute GOES-19 Visible images with plots of GLM Flash Points, from 1200-2100 UTC on 26 October [click to play MP4 animation]<\/p><\/div>The eye of Category 4 Melissa was exhibiting a “stadium effect”, with a small surface eye having walls that sloped outward with height (below)<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

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GOES-19 Visible and Infrared images at 2057 UTC on 26 October, with plots of GLM Flash Points [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>Melissa was moving through an environment of relatively light deep-layer wind shear, and was traversing warm water — two factors that favored intensification (below)<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

GOES-19 Infrared images, with an overlay of contours and streamlines of deep-layer wind shear at 1500 UTC on 26 October<\/p><\/div>\n

Sea Surface Temperature and Ocean Heat Content, with the track of Melissa ending at 1200 UTC on 26 October<\/p><\/div>\n

===== 27 October Update =====<\/strong><\/p>\n

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1-minute GOES-19 Visible and Infrared images with plots of 1-minute GOES-19 GLM Flash Points, from 1131-2200 UTC on 27 October [click to play MP4 animation]<\/p><\/div>Post-sunrise 1-minute GOES-19 Visible and Infrared images on 27 October (above)<\/strong><\/em> again showed a nice “stadium effect” with the eye of Melissa, which reached Category 5 intensity south of Jamaica at 0900 UTC. Visible images continued to display low-altitude mesovortices within the 10-mile diameter eye — and GLM Flash Points highlighted abundant lightning activity within the inner eyewall.<\/p>\n

The maximum sustained wind speed of Melissa was increased to 150 kts at 2100 UTC (SATCON<\/strong><\/a> | ADT<\/strong><\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East)\u00a0Infrared images (above) showed Tropical Storm Melissa in the Caribbean Sea as it began to rapidly intensify during the afternoon and evening hours on 25 October 2025 — reaching Category 1 intensity at 1800 UTC on 25 October and Category 3 intensity at 0300 UTC on 26 October. A series […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":67586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,159,30,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-glm","category-goes-19","category-lightning","category-tropical-cyclones"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67581"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67607,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67581\/revisions\/67607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}