AccuWeather's lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva was live on the AccuWeather Network on Oct. 29 to discuss what is next for the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.
00:00Alex, we'll talk a little bit about Melissa and historically how Melissa shapes up to other damaging storms here.
00:07But first, I kind of want to take a look at the overall season.
00:10And, you know, before Melissa hit, you and I were talking a couple of weeks ago.
00:15We saw that the wave coming off Africa, if it could stay in the Caribbean, it would be the one to watch for.
00:21And as of now, and it may be, although there's other possibilities,
00:25this is the only storm that we've seen in the Caribbean this year.
00:30Yeah, it's been a very, very impressive season so far.
00:33It's almost been feast or famine.
00:34We've seen a lot of tropical storms, but we've also seen a lot of high-end hurricanes.
00:38And, in fact, this is now the second year on record that we've seen three Category 5 hurricanes in the same year.
00:452005 is the other year that saw three Cat 5s.
00:49So a very, very impressive season that we've seen so far.
00:53Luckily, most of the storms have avoided land.
00:56Some, of course, have come close enough to the United States,
00:58where they did bring some direct impacts,
01:01but we only saw one direct landfall on the United States so far, and that was Chantal.
01:06All right, let's take a look at Melissa as far as the history books are concerned.
01:11We talk about there's a couple of ways we can measure the intensity of a hurricane.
01:15Let's begin with the pressure.
01:16Yeah, the pressure, essentially, as the storm strengthens, that pressure in the center of the storm,
01:22and that eye really, really lowers, lowers really far down.
01:26It's almost like you're kind of driving up a mountain, and then your ears start to pop.
01:30That's essentially what's going on in the middle of the hurricane.
01:33And this is what we have.
01:35These are the top hurricanes on record in the Atlantic by pressure.
01:38And you can see Melissa is third in line there behind Wilma and Gilbert on the pressure list.
01:44And then in terms of intensity for wind speed, Melissa is actually tied for second all-time in the tropical Atlantic.
01:51There's a lot of storms there that are tied with 185-mile-per-hour sustained winds.
01:56All right, including the strongest hurricane ever to make landfall in the United States, the Labor Day hurricane, 1935.
02:04That is an infamous hurricane that made landfall in the Keys.
02:09All right, as we go forward, let's talk about the month of November.
02:14And we were talking about it off camera that the long-term average is a storm every other year.
02:19But in the short term, it seems more like it's a storm a year that we get during the month of November.
02:27Yeah, and I think a lot of that actually has to do with the water temperatures.
02:29In more recent years, the water temperatures have been a little bit higher, which has given the atmosphere just that little bit of juice that it needs to produce a storm or two during the month of November.
02:38Where in the past, maybe those waters were a little bit cooler.
02:41So water temperatures are still warm.
02:43Maybe not in the Central Caribbean where this storm went by.
02:45But Southern Gulf and in the Western Caribbean, the waters are still warm.
02:49So I really think those are going to be more of the areas to focus on.
02:53More out into the Atlantic is becoming less likely.
02:55Especially, you look here, mid-November, the areas become much closer to the United States during middle of November.
03:02So overall, I think we're going to have to watch the Western Caribbean.
03:06There are signs that maybe something may try to develop there later this month.
03:12But there's nothing unusual about that.
03:14Those are the areas that we're really looking at.
03:16And it may be the end of the African wave train, any of these storms, unless they could survive and come into the Caribbean, as we mentioned.
03:26But you look at the water vapor loop, there's some pockets of dry air that would inhibit any kind of development.
03:32But really, the big story is, I mean, this is what you start seeing during the month of November.
03:39A lot of wind shear.
03:40Yeah, and that's why typically during the month of November, we really don't see a whole lot of activity.
03:45Or there are very short-lived tropical storms or hurricanes for the most part.
03:49It's very hard to get a very long-tracked storm during the month of November.
03:54It has happened, but it is harder just because the fact that you usually have more widespread wind shear.
03:59The lowest wind shear in the basin during the month of November is usually located in the central or western Caribbean.
04:06And so that's why we think that if anything is going to happen, this is the area that we would be focusing on.
04:11We're not outlooking a specific time frame at the current time.
04:15But just overall, during probably the first half of November, this is generally the area that we would want to take a look at.
04:23And this can come from two ways.
04:25One, maybe a tropical wave makes it all the way into the western Caribbean and is able to develop.
04:30Or the second way, if we start to really get that central American gyre to start spinning in there, something can develop off of that.
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