Hurricane Melissa Had World Record Wind Speed, Could Be Part Of Terrifying Trend

A dramatic view from inside the eye of Hurricane 
Melissa near Jamaica. Photo was taken for a hurricane
hunter plane. One of those planes dropped an 
instrument that detected a 252 mph wind gust
within the storm. That gust was just verified
as the strongest on record detected in a hurricane.

 It looks like Hurricane Melissa achieved at least one world record for hurricanes. 

A weather measuring instrument called a dropsonde was tossed into the hurricane from a NOAA Hurricane Hunter airplane shortly before storm made landfall in Jamaica back on October 28. 

The dropsonde recorded a wind gust of 252 mph on its way down through the storm. 

The 252 mph gust was measured about 820 feet above the ocean. 

This beats the old record for highest wind recorded by a dropsonde in a tropical system. 

That previous world record for the highest gust was 248 mph from a dropsonde that descended through Typhoon Mega in the western Pacific Ocean back in 2010. 

CONFIRMING THE DATA

A dropsonde, is a device NOAA Hurricane Hunter airplane personnel drop into the maw of hurricanes. Dropsondes have a small parachute attached and they take  somewhere between two and four readings per second before splashing into the ocean. They usually throw a bunch of dropsondes into a hurricane pretty much all at once to get a holistic look under the hood of the storm. , 

While on its way down, dropsondes grab information on air pressure, temperatures, and wind, and relay that back to the hurricane hunter plane.

The hurricane hunters knew right away that the dropsonde recorded that 252 mph gusts. But NOAA and other scientists, as they always do, wanted to double check the data to make sure there wasn't something wrong with the dropsonde. 

According to a press release from U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) it took until this week to verify the information because NCAR scientists needed to verify the data to make sure there was no glitch with the dropsonde. 

As CBS reported, researchers went through the numbers using quality control software. They also confirmed the 252 mph gust was physically possible, given Hurricane Melissa's strength and structure.

The careful review was necessary because errors can happen with dropsonde data.  A dropsonde that fell through Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A dropsonde measurement in that storm when it was in the Gulf of Mexico recorded a gust higher than that seen in Melissa.

However, researchers found a lot of problems with that Katrina measurement so it was discarded. 

RECORD BIG MELISSA

At the time the 252 mph gust was measured while Hurricane Melissa was officially a storm with sustained winds of 185 mph.  It made landfall in Jamaica at that strength. Damage in Jamaica where winds were strongest looked like they were caused by an EF-4 tornado. 

The gusts might indicate that Hurricane Melissa might have been even a little stronger than that 185 mph at landfall. 

After each hurricane, meteorologists examine the data from the storms and publish a full, detailed analysis. Those analyses often update the strength of hurricanes that differ from original reports.  

Before this 252 mph gusts was verified, Hurricane Melissa was already a record breaker. When Melissa made landfall those 185 mph (as it stands now, anyway) sustained winds ties the record for strongest winds for an Atlantic Ocean hurricane making landfall.

Only two storms the Labor Day Hurricane in Florida back in 1935 and Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas in 2019. 

The central air pressure in Hurricane Melissa reached 892 millibars. That's another way of measuring the strength of a hurricane. With that pressure, Melissa tied the record for the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane since that 1935 hurricane in Florida. 

 As the Washington Post tells us, Hurricane Melissa also set an informal record for the most eyewall lightning observed by satellites. Before landfall, the satellites detected 700 flashes per minute, or 11 per second. 

Most hurricanes don't generate much lightning. When there is lightning in a hurricane, it's a sign of an extremely intense hurricane, or one that is strengthening.  

SCARY STORM, SCARY TREND

Josh Morgerman, very likely the most prolific and expert hurricane chaser in the world, has been in the middle of 84 hurricanes and typhoons so far. He was in Jamaica for Melissa. 

He wrote: "Melissa's winds were absolutely ferocious - the most intense I've witnessed in 84 hurricanes. And the resultant damage was spectacular. This was a truly rare specimen."

Morgerman continued in his technical report on the hurricane, where he monitored the storm in a struck hotel building:

"At the height of the storm, the whiteout was 100% and the screaming sound was so hard that others in the hotel kitchen were putting their hands over their ears. This aside the explosive gustiness of the winds blasted the building, caused one's ear drums to pull painfully, so that the author was often holding or rubbing his own ears"

Morgerman said many trees that were somehow left standing were completely defoliated. In some cases the bark was ripped off.  Wood frame homes were completely flattened, concrete buildings partly collapsed and paint was blasted off some buildings and cars.

Gawd, that had to be absolutely terrifying. 

Just a reminder, though the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean doesn't seem to be increasing, the number of super powerful ones are increasing. And those top end storms seem to be getting stronger than ever. 

There's even talk of creating a Category 6 for hurricanes. Right now, the strength chart for hurricanes go from Category 1 to 5.

Climate change might well be making horrible experiences like what Jamaica went through ever more likely.  And inevitably, some of these will crash into the United States.

The records being set by Hurricane Melissa are for sure a cautionary tale.  

Summertime Is Peak Flash Flood Season Across Nation, Including Here In Vermont

Flash flooding during a torrential downpour in 
Jericho, Vermont, July 4, 2013. Summer time 
brings the highest risk of flash floods. Seems 
there's a flash flood daily in the summer somewhere
in the United States. Almost every summer brings
at least one instance of flash flooding
somewhere in Vermont. 

 Flash floods can occur any time of year, pretty much anywhere. But summertime is when we can expect them most often, and often, they're the most deadly.  

From now on into September at least, we'll see flash flood trouble spots almost daily somewhere in the United States.

As of this morning, parts of central Oklahoma are drenched and in some cases flooded. Pockets of heavy rain in the Mid-Atlantic States and parts of Washington State could see some flash flooding today.

A tropical system which might become Tropical Storm Alex, is expected to bring torrential rain tomorrow and over the weekend to South Florida, so flash flooding is a good bet there. On and on it goes. 

Here in Vermont, though rain is in the forecast for Friday, we will NOT see enough rain then to cause flooding. However, some of our worst flash flood events have occurred in June. Think June, 1973, and June, 1998 as examples. Of course, the risk continues on through the summer. 

Several reasons conspire to increase the risk of flash flooding in the summer. It can get hot and humid in the summer, duh!! 

That kind of air can hold a TON of water.  Thunderstorms forming in this humid air can dump tremendous amounts of water in a short time. 

Also, summer time air flow is often sluggish. We sometimes don't have enough wind to push a thunderstorm along very fast. So it sits in one area and pours its water on one spot. Or, thunderstorms line up like boxcars on a railroad track and go over the same spot over and over again, so a narrow band of real estate ends up suffering from a damaging flash floods.

Flash floods are often localized like that. I've seen instances in which one town is badly flooded while the pavement is still dry in a town less than 10 miles away. 

Tropical storms and hurricanes are obviously another way to see a flash flood.  They'll often hold onto a lot of moisture and cause damaging floods way inland. 

Aftermath of flash flooding, Barre, Vermont, May, 2011.

Or, the remnants of an old tropical storm can interact with another weather system to unleash a catastrophic flash flood a thousand or more miles away from where the storm came ashore. We saw that last year when Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana, and a few days later, its remains unleashed a terrible flood on the New York City area.

An even more extreme example of this came in 1997. Moisture from offshore Tropical Storm Claudette interacted with a stalled cold front over the northern Green Mountains to produce the devastating flash flood of July 15, 1997 in and around Montgomery, Vermont. 

Similarly, in 1995, a forgettable tropical storm named Dean hit the Texas coast on July 30.  Its remnants interacted with another stalled weather front in Vermont to produce destructive flash flooding in northern parts of the state on August 4-6 that year, especially in the Lamoille River Valley.

Climate change ups the ante with flash floods.  It's causing the air to become generally warmer and, especially in the eastern United States, wetter. This creates more potential for torrential downpours ad floods.

Though drought periods are increasing somewhat, overall rainfall has increased here in Vermont in recent decades.  That helps to explain why flash floods seem to have become more common in the Green Mountain State.

We've seen at least localized flash flooding in Vermont almost every summer for over two decades now.  Already, we've seen a bit of flash flooding around Proctor, Florence and West Rutland in mid-May. I fully expect to see addition flooding of this type in Vermont as we go through the summer. 

As the name implies, you don't know you're going to be hit by a flash flood until just before it happens. During periods of stormy summer weather, definitely check in with the National Weather Service for flash flood watches, warnings and statements. 

If you find yourself under a flash flood warning, move quickly to higher ground and whatever you do, don't drive over a flooded road. You don't know how deep the water is, or whether the road is even still there. Most flood deaths are in vehicles. 

We love summer rain storms. We need them.  Like every good thing in life, too much turns into a bad thing.