As we reported earlier, Melissa ranks as the most powerful hurricane ever to make a direct strike on Jamaica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Across the broader Atlantic, however, Melissa stood out for several extraordinary reasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It matched the record for the strongest hurricane to make landfall anywhere in the Atlantic basin, with sustained winds reaching 185 mph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With a central pressure of 892 mb, Melissa also equaled the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane as the most intense landfalling storm on record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, Hurricane Hunter aircraft \u2014 which collect vital data by flying directly into storms \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n
recorded an instantaneous wind gust of 252 mph just above the ocean surface before Melissa made landfall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For comparison, this reading falls only slightly below the world record for the<\/p>\n\n\n\n
highest wind gust ever documented in a tropical cyclone: 253 mph, observed during Cyclone Olivia\u2019s impact on Western Australia in April 1996. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As we reported earlier, Melissa ranks as the most powerful hurricane ever to make a direct strike on Jamaica. Across the broader Atlantic, however, Melissa stood out for several extraordinary reasons: It matched the record for the strongest hurricane to make landfall anywhere in the Atlantic basin, with sustained winds reaching 185 mph. With a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8075,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8073\/revisions\/8075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}