{"id":519386,"date":"2025-10-22T10:30:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T10:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/519386\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T10:30:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T10:30:19","slug":"where-is-tropical-storm-melissa-going-its-a-meteorological-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/519386\/","title":{"rendered":"Where is Tropical Storm Melissa going? It’s a meteorological mystery."},"content":{"rendered":"

With little to guide it, slow-moving Tropical Storm Melissa<\/a> is forecast to meander over the central Caribbean Sea for at least the next couple of days, potentially powering up to hurricane strength<\/a> as it does so.<\/p>\n

And as of Oct. 21, top computer forecast models have yet to reach a consensus on Melissa’s next move, with some showing a sharp right turn into Hispaniola and others showing a slower, more westerly path into the western Caribbean.<\/p>\n

“Melissa is going to slam on the brakes and meander in the central Caribbean for several days, with potential to become a strong hurricane,” said Houston-based meteorologist Matt Lanza on his Substack “The Eyewall<\/a>.” “It will also be a tremendous rainmaker for somewhere, depending on exactly where it stalls out.”<\/p>\n

Storms of the 2025 hurricane season so far<\/p>\n

1 of 13<\/p>\n

Hurricane Gabrielle spins in the Atlantic east of Bermuda, while two other potential storms are seen in the tropical Atlantic on the morning of Sept. 24, 2025. One is causing rain and storms over Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and the other is east of the Leeward Islands. The National Hurricane Center is monitoring all three.<\/p>\n

A slow crawl through the Caribbean<\/p>\n

Over the next few days, there shouldn’t be a whole lot to interfere with Melissa’s organization: “In general, we should see slow, steady development,” Lanza said.<\/p>\n

The primary concern will be Melissa\u2019s slow crawl through the central Caribbean as the storm spins aimlessly south of Hispaniola.<\/p>\n

“Steering currents will largely collapse, leaving Melissa meandering for several days south of eastern Cuba and Hispaniola, bringing the potential for a prolonged period of heavy rains, worsened by the steep mountainous terrain of the nearby islands, which also brings the threat of life-threatening mudslides and landslides,” said WPLG-TV hurricane specialist Michael Lowry on a Substack post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How much rain? “Parts of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba could pick up over 10 inches of total rainfall through next week,” wrote Weather.com meteorologists Caitlin Kaiser and Jonathan Erdman in an online forecast<\/a>. “Depending on the track, some bands or clusters of locally heavy rain are also possible in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos, and parts of the Bahamas.”<\/p>\n

\"On<\/p>\n

On Oct. 21, 2025, the forecast path of Tropical Storm Melissa shows the storm’s slow movement across the Caribbean over the next few days.<\/p>\n

Models don’t agree on Melissa<\/p>\n

Two of the more well-known models \u2013 familiar foes during winter storms \u2013 differ on the future path of Melissa, according to a Substack post from Weather Trader meteorologist Ryan Maue<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Into this weekend, we see that the (European model) ECMWF does NOT take Melissa across Hispaniola (as the American GFS continues to insist), but instead does a slow loop \u2013 nearly stationary next to Jamaica into early next week.”<\/p>\n

As the hurricane center<\/a> notes, the model guidance “diverges significantly with some models showing a motion to the northeast \u2026 while the other solutions show a stall or a westward drift on the south side of a building ridge.”<\/p>\n

The majority of the models show Melissa remaining in the Caribbean Sea throughout the week and into the weekend, the hurricane center said.<\/p>\n

“This has the potential to be a long, drawn-out affair lasting well into next week,” said Weather.com meteorologist Jonathan Erdman in an online forecast.<\/p>\n

‘Monster’ hurricane Melissa?<\/p>\n

One solution from the European shows what Maue describes as a “monster” Hurricane Melissa spinning over the very warm western Caribbean before sprinting across eastern Cuba into the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the United States is still likely spared in this scenario. “Still not worrying about the East Coast \u2014 that would be 10 days down the road \u2013 and would require an extremely rare alignment or weather pattern to repeat a Sandy-like trough,” Maue said.<\/a><\/p>\n

Tropical Storm Melissa spaghetti models<\/p>\n

Special note about spaghetti models:<\/strong>\u00a0Illustrations include an array of forecast tools and models, and not all are created equal. The hurricane center uses only the top four or five highest performing models to help make its forecasts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tropical Storm Melissa forecast says storm’s path is a mystery<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With little to guide it, slow-moving Tropical Storm Melissa is forecast to meander over the central Caribbean Sea…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[122563,169092,169094,169091,169093,169090,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-519386","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-caribbean-sea","9":"tag-computer-forecast-models","10":"tag-eastern-cuba","11":"tag-hispaniola","12":"tag-hurricane-strength","13":"tag-melissa","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115417358366849534","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}