Category 5 Hurricane Melissa has made landfall already in Jamaica and Cuba, as one of the strongest hurricanes to ever make landfall.

All maps are from the National Hurricane Center. Melissa strengthens to a Category 5 hurricane and is forecast to make landfall in Jamaica Hurricane Melissa’s track Hurricane Melissa’s timing and wind speeds Hurricane Melissa’s rainfall forecast Hurricane Melissa’s key messages Sign up for the Today newsletter Get everything you need to know to start your day,

The intensity of a hurricane is measured by its maximum sustained wind speed, and when that speed increases by at least 35 miles per hour in a 24-hour period — or roughly two categories on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale — meteorologists call that “rapid intensification.”

Melissa is among three Atlantic hurricanes to make landfall with 185 mph winds. Another storm to do so was the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935.

Jamaica is expected to be in the storm's eyewall, which refers to the band of dense clouds surrounding the eye of the hurricane. The eyewall generally produces the fiercest winds and heaviest rainfall, according to Deanna Hence, a professor of climate, meteorology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

For a Category 5, this means speeds above 252 kilometers per hour (157 miles per hour). According to the National Hurricane Center’s (NHC) latest report, Melissa’s current maximum sustained wind speed sits at around 280 km/h (175 mph). This makes it the strongest storm to have hit in 2025.

Hurricane Melissa’s powerful winds and drenching rains devastated Jamaica. But is its wrath a sign that we need a new designation for monster storms?

The storm, which is set to make landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday, has stunned meteorologists with its intensity and the speed at which it built.

Hurricane Melissa— one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded—is now off Cuba’s eastern coast, after leaving a trail of destruction across the large island and its much smaller neighbor, Jamaica.

It took less than a day for Hurricane Melissa’s wind speed to double to 140 MPH. It is now heading for Jamaica, where its winds have 160 MPH. The reasons for this increase are hotter water in the Atlantic and Caribbean.

Josh Wurman and Karen Kosiba, the researchers inside the mobile radar unit, noted the average wind inside the hurricane’s eyewall was between 90 and 100 mph; it ramped up to 145 mph during the passage of at least one of these whirls.