Impressive Storm Departing Vermont, Big Rain Totals Northwest, Snow, Wind, Power Issues Too

The city of St. Albans released this photo of some
flooding Friday at the intersection of South Elm and
Lower Weldon streets. Heavy rain, clogged
storm drains are driving especially wet. 

The storm that came blowing through Vermont really dumped a lot of rain, especially in the northwest, cut power in two rounds and gave upper elevations their first snow of the season. 

Rainfall

I don't have a lot of rainfall reports yet, as full reports about storms like these usually come out in the late morning. 

But I bet some areas of the western slopes of the Green Mountains had a good three inches of rain. Burlington logged an impressive 1.89 inches. 

My unofficial rain gauge in St. Albans collected a whopping 2.66 inches.That brings the total here since October 20 to 6.76 inches. Pretty impressive for a drought! It's past gardening season, but it's safe to say my perennial areas are dusty no longer. 

Elsewhere in the Green Mountain State, drought relief wasn't quite as soggy. Montpelier had a respectable inch or so of rain in this storm. St. Johnsbury was left out, receiving only about 0.36 inches. 

Down in southern Vermont, Rutland got an OK 1.39 inches, Springfield got about an inch and a half, and Bennington logged a nice 2.28 inches. 

Despite the drought, there was actually some very minor flooding in northwest Vermont.. Rivers behaved themselves, of course. Water levels rose, but stayed far, far, far below flood stage.

But the combination of downpours, leaves clogging drains, and soil that resists water due to drought created a lot of puddles, flooded intersections, swampy back yards and full drainage ditches. 

Droughts harden the ground, especially areas with clay soil, so rain can't penetrate as easily. It's another way that droughts sustain themselves. It's also why we had quite a bit of standing water around the Champlain Valley on Friday. 

Despite the relative inability of soils to soak in all that rain, I do think the storm will ease the drought somewhat, at least in northwest Vermont. We probably won't see all that much improvement in other parts of Vermont, but you'll never know. The next weekly drought report is due next Thursday. 

 Strong winds/snow

 After a round of power outages from strong east winds Thursday night, the wind shifted and picked up again, causing more outages Friday afternoon and night. Nearly 5,000 Vermont homes and businesses had no electricity shortly before midnight last night. 

Vermont Agency of Transportation web cam revealed
a wintry Route 242 in Westfield, Vt. this morning. 

Peak gusts yesterday included 57 mph in Jay, and 54 mph at Camels Hump State Park and Colchester Reef. 

Web cams are showing a couple inches of snow along high elevation roads like Route 17 in Buels Gore and Route 242 in Westfield. It looks like those roads were pretty slippery overnight, but road crews have gotten them back into shape. 

Get used to it. Last night was just the opening salvo of a long Vermont winter. 

LOOKING AHEAD

The good news for those who aren't prepared is no snowstorms are in the offing. There might be some snowflakes in the mountains, but that's about it. 

The big, deep, windy storm will still have an influence on us here in Vermont today as it lumbers away toward Newfoundland and Labrador. 

Winds will stay blustery out of the northwest, with some places gusting to 40 mph. The northern and  central Green Mountains will continue to see some snow showers, but nothing much. Northern valleys might see a few sprinkles. Clouds will dominate this morning but breaks of sun will arrive in the valleys this afternoon. That's especially true in southern Vermont. 

Behind today, we have no more big storms coming, at least not here in Vermont. Instead, we're settling into a pattern of changeable day to day weather. Small storms and cold fronts should come through roughly every two or three days for the next couple weeks. 

A couple of these storms will blow up to become fairly impressive blasts in Atlantic Canada, but when they come through northern New England, they'll just be in their weak infancy. We'll just get splashes of showers, and some mountain light snows 

Maybe one of those small storms coming up will surprise us with a few downpours, but don't count on it. We do need more of the kind of drenchers that hit parts of Vermont on Friday. 

But I guess near-normal precipitation is better than none at all. 

Clickbaiting A Disaster: How Social Media "Influencers" Spread Weather Panic For Profit. .

Various forecasts for the track of Hurricane Melissa,
issued last Friday evening. Most of the predicted
paths accurately predicted the hurricane would
miss the U.S. East Coast by a wide margin. One
of the forecasts had it swerving toward New York
and some online hyped that. The black line is
the average of all the forecasts, and it was
quite close to the actual track of Melissa. 

Hurricane Melissa was bad enough, right?  

At least 50 people have died in the hurricane The destruction is immense in Jamaica. Haiti is a flooded, disastrous mess. Parts of the Bahamas are trashed, too. 

It was all super frightening. And fascinating in a horrifying way. 

As terrible as Hurricane Melissa was, people found ways to make everybody's distress over the tragedy worse.  

The means? Alarming people for online revenue.  . 

CLICKBAITING A DISASTER

A classic example came as Melissa was building up its strength last weekend. 

We knew then things would get bad, really bad in the Caribbean. The natural question was, would we in the United States suffer the wrath of Melissa?

By last Saturday, meteorologists were unanimously saying no, the United States was safe. 

But that didn't stop the folks on social media. One example came in a  Facebook post from Southern Maryland Weather Center  which called attention to this stupid scheme. 

Unlike Southern Maryland Weather Center and reputable meteorologists, social media scum scumbags This outfit tried to drum up fear on the East Coast, by suggesting Melissa would probably slam into the U.S. East Coast, probably near New Jersey.

This Facebook post said the person or persons they saw who showed the path toward New Jersey tried to clarify that the New Jersey scenario was unlikely, but who reads the fine print nowadays? 

Here's the deal: 

Each computer model has dozens of runs showing the projected track of storms. On Saturday, almost all those predicted tracks took Melissa over the Atlantic Ocean, very far from the East Coast. One of the tracks, on one of the models took Melissa to a landfall near New York City.  When you see a model track like that different from the others, it's known as an outlier. Probably bad data. Don't pay attention.

Most meteorologists and weather geeks ignored that outlier and accurately told the public that Hurricane Melissa would miss the East Coast by a wide margin. They figured it was better to be accurate than a lying carnival barker. 

Social media thrives on instilling fear, anger, strong emotions. You're going to get a stronger reaction if you tell New Yorkers a hurricane is going to destroy their homes. So more clicks, more revenue. 

This phenomenon isn't unique to Hurricane Melissa. Clickbaiters always pull looming weather catastrophes out of their hats whenever there's the slightest hint of a strange storm or temperature extreme. 

The average doomscroller on social media is not a weather geek. It's often hard for people not steeped in meteorology to figure out which source is reliable and which isn't.  

Go with the tried and true. The National Weather Service, or in the case of hurricanes, the National Hurricane Center.  

For local weather, the TV meteorologists in your area tend to be quite reliable. And use your judgement. If the weather source you're using always seems to tell you extreme weather is coming, beware. 

Blogs like this will report on severe weather when it's happening. Or before it happens. But if the forecast looks like a yawner, we'll tell you that, too.

Speaking of false Melissa information, I have another post coming on the flood of fake AI images about Hurricane Melissa and the harm that does. 

 . 

Was A Stormy Vermont Night, And It Won't Be A Nice Day (But We Needed The Rain)

Just a few leaves clinging to the trees in St. Albans,
Vermont yesterday. This was before bigger wind
gusts and heavier rain. By tomorrow, most of 
these remaining leaves will be on the ground. 

Well,  you can tell we're heading into winter because we had a classic cold season stormy night in Vermont. 

Since it's not quite winter, it didn't snow, at least not yet (hint, hint) but wind and rain made for a noticeable, even sleepless night for some of us. 

Today and tonight will remain on the wet and windy side, too. This time of year in the Green Mountain State is not exactly known for its glorious weather. 

November, a month known in Vermont for wind, overcast and dampness starts tomorrow. We're just getting a slightly early start. 

Vermont power outages flared up between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m., mostly over the western slopes of the Green Mountains. Those outages peaked at a little over 7,700 at around midnight. 

These western slope windstorms tend to contain brief, intense gusts between periods of relatively calm air. They also sometimes tend to be rather localized. One section of town get blasted, while other nearby neighborhoods are OK. 

I noticed some occasional strong easterly gusts at around 9:30 or 10 last night here in St Albans.  People on Facebook reported tree damage and power outages. A cluster of three large pines in Pittsford reportedly broke off about 25 feet above the ground. One person said they had a 90 mph gust in South Lincoln, but I'm a little suspicious of that report. 

Somebody in Killington said their home weather station registered a 72 mph gust. Not far away in Chittenden another home wind gauge clicked at 68 mph. Power outages and tree damage was also reported in northern Vermont, especially around Hyde Park and Craftsbury. 

These are all unofficial reports from Facebook, but it does indicate last night was windier than predicted in spots. Doppler radar did detect gusts over 60 mph in some pockets near the western slopes of the Greens last night at around 9 p.m. just before the peak wind reports came in. 

As of this morning, winds have died down but they'll get gusty again later. More on that in a bit. 

I also don't have complete rainfall totals yet. Southern Vermont seems to have gotten some nice, beneficial rains. Through 7 a.m. Springfield reported 1.37 inches and Bennington 2.12.

Many northern areas of Vermont, like Burlington,  has only received around a half inch of rain through 7 a.m. But the burst of heavier rain this morning hadn't finished up yet in the north. By Saturday morning, storm totals should be around three quarters of an inch, give or take, in northeast Vermont and around an inch in the Champlain Valley. 

We should see another little dent in the drought because of this storm, but it certainly won't erase the entire problem. 

The storm was even worse elsewhere in the Northeast. Torrential rains caused big time flash flooding in and around New York City. Two men were found dead in separate flooded basements.   

REST OF THE STORM 

Dusting off the old National Weather Service snow
prediction map for another season. It shows light
accumulations by tomorrow in the Adirondacks, and
along the spine of the Green Mountains. 

Bursts of rain were still moving through Vermont as dawn broke today.  There were even some lightning strikes near Burlington shortly after 7 a.m. today. 

The rain should taper off later this morning, and much of the afternoon should feature just cloudy skies, with some light showers mostly in the north.  

Precipitation should blossom again this afternoon and continue much of the night, especially in the mountains and in the northwestern third of Vermont. 

Not much additional rain will hit the south, but some light rain and sprinkles should pop up even in the drier southeastern valleys.   

Ghost and goblins roaming the streets this evening should get pretty damp. Witches on brooms might get blown off course by the wind. Dracula will have no trouble with sunshine. 

This won't be entirely rain, either. 

As colder air moves rain will change to snow at the summits this afternoon. Overnight and early Saturday, snowflakes will get to as low as maybe 1,200 to 1,500 feet in elevations. Places at and above 2,000 feet could get a slushy coating of snow, with several inches at the summits by Saturday morning. 

The wind will get cranking later this afternoon, and overnight, and into Saturday as well. This time, the gusts will come from west and northwest. Since winds tend to accelerate as they go downhill, this time it will be the eastern, not western slopes of the Greens that get the most wind.

Peak wind gusts won't be as high as last night, but they will be more widespread. Top wind gusts for most of us will be in the 30 to 40 mph range, with higher gusts in the mountains and eastern slopes, and maybe the broad waters of Lake Champlain. 

It'll be blustery and cold Saturday, but most of the rain and high elevation snow showers should be in the mountains, and along the western slopes of the Greens. You'll see some sunshine in the valleys of southeast Vermont, but the north will be mostly cloudy 

Once again a classic November day. 

This is turning out to be a pretty big storm. Not a record breaker and nothing unprecedented. But definitely a notable one. 

There will be occasional rain and or snow chances once every few days now into the middle of November, but for now, I don't see any storms as big as the one we're gettin now. 

 

More North Carolina Homes Fall Into Ocean Amid Moderate Nor'easter

A rainbow appears above the wreckage of more houses
that collapsed into the surf in Buxton, North Carolina
this week. Photo via Facebook, Island Free Press.

 If you've been keeping track like I have, more homes fell into the ocean on North Carolina's Outer Banks Tuesday. 

One of the collapses was a large green home that has been teetering precariously since waves from hurricanes Humberto and Imelda battered it between September 30 and October 3. Nine homes fell into the surf on those dates. 

Another home was ready to fall because a neighboring one that collapsed on October 18 struck its pilings, making it vulnerable to new waves. 

During a moderate-sized nor'easter on Tuesday, four of the homes fell within less than two and a half hours of one another. The other collapsed late in the afternoon. Winds were gusting to 50 mph and tides were higher than normal. 

A total of 27 homes have collapses since 2020. Fifteen of those collapses have happened in the past month. One in Rodanthe, North Carolina and the others in Buxton. 

Brett Barley, a professional surfer from Buxton wrote on Facebook: 

"The Oceanfront of Buxton is becoming unrecognizable.....As I stood at the end of Cottage Ave. this evening with @danielpullen, neither one of us could wrap our heads around what we were looking at, or had just witnessed this afternoon.

Both of us have grown up our whole lives running every dune of this area, chasing waves & beach days, and Daniel actually spending years living on Cottage Ave, its hard to witness the end of these roads just laid bare, Not just the front line of houses, but now homes that were 2 back and 3 back from the ocean are gone or at water's edge. Not just rental houses at stake, but now main dwellings of locals, or houses of family friends.....it's heartbreaking to see, and a lot to take in & process." 

Hurricane Melissa was passing far offshore of North Carolina today. That storm will probably send more swells into North Carolina's Outer Banks. The swells, in turn will threaten more vulnerable homes. 

Locals are monitoring three homes that look like they will collapse at any moment. 

To review what's happening. Barrier islands always shift, and that's what's happening in the North Carolina Outer Banks. However, changes there are on turbocharge lately because climate change is making sea levels rise and intensifying stories, 

Video:

Clips of some of the homes in Buxton, North Carolina falling into the sea Tuesday. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below click on that. 

Long, Hard Recovery Begins In Jamaica As Hurricane Melissa Speeds Away To North Atlantic

Photo of extreme winds from Hurricane Melissa in
Jamaica. The photographer, Josh Morgerman said
this was actually before the peak of the winds. 

The wrath of Hurricane Melissa will soon end as the storm races northeastward away from the Bahamas, but the storm and its aftermath has changed lives forever. 

As of this morning, the death toll from Hurricane Melissa rose past 30 as of this morning, but we still do not have a full accounting of the toll in Jamaica, the hardest hit island in the Caribbean. 

Communications there are still spotty, and many roads are blocked. Which means reaching the hardest hit areas is difficult to say the least. 

Most of the reported deaths so far are in Haiti. Per USA Today:

"Though Melissa did not directly hit Haiti, the Caribbeans' most populous nation, the storm battered the island with days of rain. On Wednesday, authorities reported at least 25 deaths, largely due to floods in Petit-Goave, a coastal town about 40 miles west of the capital, where a river burst its banks."

Several people are still missing in Haiti, and thousands of homes are damaged and destroyed.

That's still nothing compared to scope of the destruction in parts of Jamaica. The search and recovery of victims in Jamaica really hasn't started in earnest yet. 

Weather and climate journalist Jonathan Petramala, in a YouTube video posted this morning, said he and many others had been trying for more than 12 hours to reach the hardest hit coastline of Jamaica. The roads to the southwest coast are an impenetrable mass of mud, twisted trees, water and debris. 

That's bad news, because survivors on the southwest coast are most in need of help.  In the Jamaican town Petramala was reporting from, survivors said they had no drinking water and no food amid the now roofless houses and debris-clogged landscape. Dead goats, drowned in the storm, littered the neighborhood

The storm itself had to be terrifying. Josh Morgerman, a hurricane expert who has now experienced the eyes 83 hurricanes, described Melissa as easily among the scariest he's experienced. On Facebook, he wrote about the scene just before the hurricane reached peak intensity.

"Bone-rattling gusts were making roofs explode into clouds of lethal confetti. The grand palm tree out front was starting to bend obscenely - in a way I found unnatural."

Then the peak of the storm hit. Morgerman described it this way:

"The hurricane's inner eyewall was a screaming white void. All I could see through the cracks in the shutters was the color white - accompanied by a constant, ear-splitting scream that actually caused pain. ....The scream occasionally got higher and angrier and those extra-screechy screams made my eardrums pulse. Meanwhile, water was forcing in through every crack - under the floor and between the window slats."

Drone video taken after skies cleared made it look like a 30 mile wide EF-4 tornado had smashed through western Jamaica. 

Jamaicans are doing what they can to start recovering from then catastrophe. The capital, Kingston, was not all that badly damaged by Melissa, so the seat of government is able to coordinate relief and logistics. 

Video from Jamaica showed people already starting to work on replacing roofs on homes. Bulldozers were pushing mud off roads. People with chainsaws and machetes were hacking their way through walls of fallen trees that were blocking roads. 

At least eight Jamaican hospitals had power restored as of today. Kingston's airport reopened today, allowing planes loaded with aid to land.   Ten commercial flights are also scheduled, so tourists can leave the island.

The airport in hard-hit Montego Bay also opened to relief flights today, but commercial flights are still a no-go, so tourists are still stranded there. 

All this is a start, but it might take years for Jamaica to fully recover. And I'm not even really including the damage Melissa caused in Haiti, Cuba and the Bahamas. 

MELISSA'S ENDGAME

Hurricane Melissa is persistent as hell. 

Top winds had dropped to 90 mph as it was interacting with islands in the Bahamas. But despite strong upper level winds that tend to rip hurricanes apart, Melissa managed to strengthen its winds to 105 mph by late this morning. 

Melissa might even get a little stronger in the next few hours. But colder ocean water temperatures and howling upper level winds will make the storm lose its tropical characteristics as it passes by Bermuda tonight. 

It'll still be a hurricane force storm when it clips the southeast corner of Newfoundland Friday night or Saturday as it races northeastward over the Atlantic.

VIDEO

YouTube video, much of it taken from drone, of the devastation in Haiti from Hurricane Melissa. Click on this link to view. Or if you see the image below, click on that. 

 

New England/Vermont Drought Holds Firm, Only Slight Improvement After Last Week's Rains

Only slight improvement shown in this week's
 Drought Monitor for Vermont. The 
Green Mountains went from extreme 
drought down to a slightly less dire
severe drought. Everything else
in Vermont was unchanged from
last week's report. 

 The closely watched weekly U.S. Drought Monitor came out on scheduled this morning, and it shows only modest improvement here in Vermont, despite some decent rains last week. 

It demonstrates how hard it is to emerge from a drought. It was a flash drought, one that developed over just a few weeks. Unfortunately, once you're in a drought, it's hard to get out of it. 

The area of Vermont under extreme drought diminished a little since last week. The area of extreme drought was removed from the Green Mountain range  Extreme drought continues in western Addison County and east of the Green Mountains and roughly north of Route 4. 

This makes sense, since last week's storm dumped its heaviest rain along the spine of the Green Mountains. 

About 47 percent of Vermont was in extreme drought this week, compared to 59 percent last week. So, not much improvement. 

Areas that were in severe drought in Vermont are unchanged from last week. Far northwestern Vermont, a small corner of southwest Vermont and a thin sliver along the Massachusetts border were in less intense moderate drought, exactly the same as last week.

In the rest of New England and Northeast, areas of extreme drought diminished a little in New Hampshire and some of the mountains of western Maine. However, drought intensified in southern and eastern Maine. 

Drought conditions in New York were basically  unchanged, improving a little near Lake Erie but worsening a bit in some of the central parts of the state. 

It's raining again in the Northeast, so maybe there will be another slight improvement next week. 

VERMONT RAIN  OUTLOOK

A little more drought relief coming today through
early Saturday with 0.5 to a little over an inch of
rain in the forecast for Vermont. 

We are going to get a decent rainfall in Vermont today through early Saturday, though in some parts of the state, predicted rainfall amounts are cut back a little. 

The heaviest rain looks like it will go to the west and east of Vermont. Parts of central and northwest New York, and eastern New England should get 1.5 inches of rain or a little more than that by Saturday morning. 

Vermont should do OK, with maybe a half inch in low elevations of southwest Vermont, about three quarters of an inch across the southeast, central and northern parts of the state. 

Northwest Vermont, often the winner lately with rainstorms, will probably do it again, with an expected rainfall of a little over an inch by Saturday. 

Here are the picky details of the forecast: 

he initial burst of rain this morning is moving directly north over New York. It's having a tough time moving east into Vermont.

It will gradually get wetter, west to east across the Green Mountain State today. The rain might kind of sputter out for a time late this afternoon and early evening. But then a good wave of steady rain should come in tonight.

For much of the state, it will be kind of a stormy night.  On top of the rain, a stiff east wind will blow across much of the area. That will be especially true along the western slopes of the Green Mountain, where winds could gust to 45 mph or so.

A few favored spots along the western slopes could maybe gust to 55 mph, but that won't be widespread. If the rain is on the heavy side, the wind will be a little lighter. Periods when the rain is much lighter along the western slopes might bring some stronger gusts. 

Not a horrific storm, but tonight's weather will show that we're now into the season where we can get those blustery late autumn storms 

The rain should continue into Friday, but it will turn showery by afternoon. The rain will mostly end in southeast Vermont. 

Friday will be another blustery day, especially in the afternoon, with the wind coming from the northwest instead of the east.  The rain might stop completely for awhile Friday morning as a tongue of dry air tries to  come in. But showers will fill back in, especially north and along the western slopes of the central and northern Green Mountains. 

For trick or treaters, this Halloween will be a polar opposite of last year. Halloween, 2024 brought record-shattering high temperatures, and those ghosts and monsters and goblins on the streets basically enjoyed a typical summer evening. 

Not this year. A gusty northwest wind will add to the chill amid temperatures in the 40s to around 50 at best Friday evening. The showers will be relatively light, but persistent, especially central and north. 

As the night goes on, snow that will have started at the summits Friday afternoon will go downhill in elevation, reaching as low as 1,500 feet by Saturday morning. There could be light accumulations above 2,000 feet, and maybe several inches at the summits.

Saturday will be a blustery, cold, cloudy November day, which is a hallmark of the month. There could be some valley light rain showers and mountain snow showers, but amounts will be light. 

Sunday will be calmer.

As we look ahead in hopes of more drought relief, I don't see much. It looks like the pattern heading into mid-November will feature frequent chances of light rain or mountain snow. I don't see any signs of more drenching super-soakers for now. 

 

Melissa Blasting Cuba, Jamaica Wakes Up To Devastation, And Some Science Behind The Storm

Image from the Weather Channel showing extreme
flooding in Jamaica from Hurricane Melissa.

Hurricane Melissa continued its rampage overnight, smashing through eastern Cuba with winds as high as 120 mph. 

That's better than the 185 mph that parts of Jamaica endured at landfall, but the wind and the incredible flooding just add to the pile of damages in the Caribbean from this incredible storm. 

The wind and rain is finally calming down in Jamaica, so they can start assessing where they stand after their "Storm of the Century."

Calling it that is actually a bit of an understatement. Hurricane Melissa was one of only six storms known in the Atlantic with winds of at least 185 mph. Only three known Atlantic storms - a 1935 hurricane in Florida, Hurricane Dorian in 2019 and Melissa had winds that strong at landfall. 

The National Hurricane Center will eventually review data from Hurricane Melissa to determine whether this stat is accurate. 

Some data suggests that Melissa's winds might have been even stronger, beating the all time record for high winds, which was set in 1980 during Hurricane Allen in the Gulf of Mexico. Those winds were 190 mph. 

As of this morning, we have no idea what the Jamaican death toll is. We only have reports from when the storm was ramping up - three dead.  We don't know what happened when the core of the storm buzz sawed through. 

I'm hoping Jamaica got really lucky in that respect. I imagine we'll learn more later today. 

The western half of Jamaica is especially devastated from the tornado-like winds and massive amounts of water that fell from the sky. Eastern Jamaica seems to be doing better. Video from the capitol, Kingston, shows that city to be largely intact. 

Given that so much of western Jamaica is in ruins, the island nation will need lots of help. Their government has set up a web site that allows people to report problems, the public to donate, and prioritize needs. 

Even the United States, where President Donald Trump does not like to help others, might step in. Trump said, "On a humanitarian basis, we have to. So we're watching it closely and we're prepared to move."

I'm sure there will be more details to come on Jamaican relief efforts. But be forewarned: There will also be a LOT of scammers pretending to be trying to help Jamaica. They'll just steal money that was donated. 

Do some research before donating, and give to reputable charities. 

Melissa's life is fortunately coming to an end soon. It's got one more big stop, in the southeast Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. It'll swipe past Bermuda Friday, and then it Melissa will die over the North Atlantic. 

Climate change is being accurate blamed for helping fuel Melissa. But it's more complicated than just climate change. 

True, the Caribbean water that Melissa passed over was the warmest on record, in part due to climate change. 

But also, unlike most years, there were no hurricanes in the Caribbean this year until Melissa. Hurricanes tend to bring cool water up from the depths. So a late season hurricane in the Caribbean would have normally encountered somewhat cooler water than Melissa did. 

If that were the case, Melissa wouldn't have gotten so strong. 

Melissa also moved forward very slowly, almost stalling at times, giving it more time to strengthen. 

More often that not, a slow moving storm like Melissa will eventually choke itself off from the warm water feeding it. A hurricane would draw cooler water to the surface, diminishing its potential power.  

This time, the Caribbean waters were unusually hot to a great depth beneath the surface. Melissa pulled water up from the deep. But that water was warm, too, so the storm kept on strengthening. 

Overall, the research group Climate Central said the conditions that turned Hurricane Melissa into such a monster were made up to 700 times more likely due to human caused climate change.  

One tiny bit of good news: As we approach the end of hurricane season, the National Hurricane Center does not see any potential new tropical storms or hurricanes for at least the next week, probably more. Maybe there won't even be any more, we hope.