The response to Hurricane Melissa has been disgusting in its ignorance. Report after report has hailed the hurricane’s nature as one of its kind – an apocalyptic devastation, seemingly never to happen again. World Meteorological Organization’s tropical cyclone specialist Anne-Claire Fontan even described the system as the “storm of the century.” This sentiment has been echoed elsewhere. It cannot be understated just how devastating Hurricane Melissa was – 75 have already been pronounced dead and countless more are still missing – but labeling this storm as an outlier in severity does a disservice to the damage it has caused and those affected by it. With ocean temperatures consistently breaking previous records and storms intensifying faster than ever, this so-called “storm of the century” is merely another example of our planet’s perverse new normal. Unless we recognize the future threats that Melissa precedes, we will be helpless in the face of further tragedies.
Packing the death and destruction behind Hurricane Melissa into headline-ready “storm of the century” formatting is both inaccurate and insulting. The facts and numbers behind the storm cannot be shrugged off. Melissa slammed ashore with sustained winds of 185 mph, becoming the third Category 5 storm this year. Whole communities in Jamaica have been flattened, even as the slow recovery process begins. Jamaica’s largest parish, St. Elizabeth, with a population of over 150,000, was left almost entirely underwater. Superintendent Coleridge Minto, head of the region’s police, estimated that as much as 90% of St. Elizabeth’s infrastructure had been severely damaged. Storm surges as high as 13 feet drowned low-lying towns, even as winds ripped roofs from homes and hospitals alike, devastating communities indiscriminately. Across the Caribbean, hundreds of thousands are without power and nearly a million more were forced to vacate their homes for their own safety. In Cuba, one fifth of the nation’s population is in urgent need of food, shelter, water and healthcare. This is devastation on the scale of near collapse for island communities – and a preview of what awaits the rest of the world if trends continue.
Hurricane Melissa was not a freak of nature; rather, it was a result of continued ocean warming trends. In 2024, the world’s oceans were the warmest on record, continuing a decades-long pattern. Hurricane Melissa reflected this and was formed in an oceanic region measured to be two to three degrees Celsius warmer than normal. This excess heat runs deep into the ocean, creating enormous reserves of energy for storms to draw on. When tropical cyclones move over these temperature batteries, they undergo rapid intensification, where storms spontaneously strengthen in mere hours. This process was uncommon in the past, but in the modern day has increased in prevalence as a result of climate change, where as much as 90% of excess heat is channeled back into the Earth’s oceans. Hurricane Melissa was the fourth storm this year to undergo the process.
This is no coincidence. “Climate change is fundamentally changing our weather,” said Bernardette Wood Placky, chief meteorologist of Climate Central. “In our warmer world, it will continue to increase the likelihood of storms going through rapid and super-rapid intensification.” The implications of this are terrifying. Beyond rapid intensification, as storms become stronger, changing weather patterns cause them to move through areas slower and give them the power to reach further inland. Unless we work to cool our oceans as soon as possible, this trend will only escalate, leading to more tragedies.
The science behind Melissa’s threat is not up for debate, despite current policy acting like it is. Each year, private-sector emissions grow. Despite this, public concern is waved off with promises of “green emissions” and vague environmental “action plans.” In the wake of Hurricane Melissa, it has become clear that these voluntary efforts and half measures are nowhere near enough to save us from the apocalyptic dangers of climate change. What is needed is new policy – a reemphasis on emission laws cut under the Trump administration. If the world wants to fight back against the forces behind Hurricane Melissa, binding limits on carbon emissions, oversight on polluters and investment in environmentally threatened communities are required. Groundwork for these solutions, such as the Clean Air Act, already exists – all that is missing is the courage to enact them. Hurricane Melissa makes that failure hard to ignore and further hesitation to label the issue will only result in more death.
We need to stop mourning Hurricane Melissa as solely an act of nature; it isn’t. Rather, it is an act of negligence, the result of decades of treating our warming oceans and climate as background noise. If Melissa doesn’t wake us up, then nothing will. We can no longer afford to label the extreme as anything outside of the norm. The “storm of the century” is now a concept from a distant, greener past. Recognizing that is our first step to survival. From there, law, policy and action are all that can save us. We may not be able to stop hurricanes from forming, but we can stop helping them grow.