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When Hurricane Melissa roared ashore in Jamaica on Oct. 28, it brought 185-mph sustained winds and tied the record for the strongest Atlantic storm to make landfall. Two factors are contributing to Melissa’s catastrophic intensity, factors that are not unique to Caribbean waters and suggest that such superstorms are likely to become big problems for other cyclone-prone regions. Like South Carolina. One factor is that the Caribbean Sea is warmer than it’s supposed to be, and has warmer waters at deeper levels than normal. That's the fuel for storms. It causes rapid intensification — when a hurricane’s internal wind speed grows by at least 30 knots in a 24-hour period. That used to be very unusual. Not anymore. Scientists said Melissa is the fourth storm in the Atlantic this year to undergo rapid intensification. “That part of the Atlantic is extremely warm right now — around 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), which is 2 to 3 degrees Celsius above normal,” said Akshay Deoras, a meteorologist at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. “And it’s not just the surface. The deeper layers of the ocean are also unusually warm, providing a vast reservoir of energy for the storm.” A 2023 study found that Atlantic hurricanes now are more than twice as likely to intensify rapidly from minor storms to powerful and catastrophic events. The study looked at 830 Atlantic tropical cyclones since 1971. It found that in the last 20 years, 8.1 percent of storms powered from a Category 1 minor storm to a major hurricane in just 24 hours. That happened only 3.2 percent of the time from 1971 to 1990, according to a study in the journal Scientific Reports.
