Hurricane Melissa

29 October Update | Summary
Posting Date: October 29, 2025, 11:00:00 AM

Hurricane Melissa made a historic landfall near New Hope, Jamaica yesterday as a category 5 hurricane with maximum 1-minute sustained winds of 185 mph and a minimum central pressure of 892 mb – tying it with the 1935 “Labor Day” storm which impacted the Florida Keys as the most intense storm to make landfall on record.

ALERT™ subscribers can download similar stochastic event (SSE) IDs for Hurricane Melissa from the Downloads tab of this posting on the ALERT website (note updated URL). Users should note that there are no changes to the events selected yesterday.

Information has begun to trickle in on Hurricane Melissa’s impacts in Jamaica this morning. Local government minister Desmond Mckenzie said on Tuesday afternoon that the southwestern parish of St. Elizabeth was "under water" and that damage was “extensive”, including significant roof damage to the Black River Hospital there. The border of the parish is just east of New Hope, where Melissa made landfall yesterday. Montego city on the north side of the island has been effectively split in half by floodwaters. Images and videos on social media have shown uprooted trees, flooded streets, and significant structural damage to homes and businesses. Over 500,000 customers are without power in Jamaica as of Wednesday morning.

As of 8:00 am EDT Wednesday, Melissa was 45 miles northwest of Guantanamo, Cuba, with maximum 1-minute sustained winds of 105 mph and a minimum central pressure of 968 mb, per the National Hurricane Center. The storm is moving north-northeast at 14 mph. Melissa has caused significant flooding and damage in Cuba – including riverine flooding that has cut an estimated 140,000 persons off from the rest of the island - and is expected to bring wind and storm surge impacts to the southeastern and central Bahamas today. The areas of the Bahamas expected to be most impacted by Melissa – Crooked Island, Acklins, and the eastern tip of Long Island – are all sparsely populated.

Our next update on Melissa will come on Thursday, October 30^th. An industry loss estimate, custom event sets for Touchstone and Touchstone Re, a shapefile of modeled wind hazard, and industry loss-based similar stochastic events will be produced for this event for impacts in Jamaica and will be available by early next week, either Monday or Tuesday morning, UK/EU; we will follow up with specific details on timing later this week. Depending on impacts in the Bahamas, additional similar stochastic events may be released as part of Thursday’s update. In the meantime, please contact your Verisk representative with any questions about this event.

29 October Update | Downloads
Posting Date: October 29, 2025, 11:00:00 AM

The information provided herein is strictly confidential and is solely for the use of Verisk clients; disclosure to others is prohibited.

Similar Stochastic Event IDs

User note: After analysis by Verisk meteorologists and engineers, no changes have been made to the similar stochastic event selection provided on Tuesday. These event IDs are provided again here for convenience only.

Product	File Type	Description	Download
TOUCHSTONE / Re	Excel (xls)	Selected set of stochastic events, with Readme in Excel format
TOUCHSTONE / Re	CSV (csv)	Selected set of stochastic events, formatted for import into Touchstone/Re