Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest ever recorded in the Caribbean, is set to hit Jamaica early on Tuesday after undergoing “rapid intensification” — a climate-charged phenomenon that’s increasingly sending devastating storms to the region.

On Saturday morning, Melissa was still just a tropical storm. But in under a day, the storm’s wind speeds increased from about 115 kilometres per hour to 225 kilometres per hour on Sunday.

By Monday morning, it had become a Category 5 hurricane, one of the fastest intensifications ever seen in the Caribbean.

By that afternoon, the winds had reached speeds of 281 kilometres per hour, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC), making it the strongest storm on the planet so far in 2025.

Because it's also moving very slowly, Melissa is "

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