If you went out on Halloween night in Montreal, there is a good chance you came home drenched. While the rainfall may have felt like a typical Canadian autumn misfortune, its source lay thousands of kilometres away, in the Caribbean.
On October 28, Hurricane Melissa, a Category Five storm with winds exceeding 295 km/h (180 mph), struck Jamaica. The hurricane was among the strongest ever recorded in the Atlantic since records have been kept, according to AccuWeather meteorologists.
The Prime Minister of Jamaica, Andrew Holness, described the situation as catastrophic, warning that “there is no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a Category 5.” According to AP News, the storm’s slow movement compounded its destructiveness, allowing intense rainfall of up to 50 cm or more in some areas of Jamaica.
For Jamaicans, this hurricane was unprecedented, its destructive unlike that of any other storm in living memory. In the aftermath of Melissa, one hospital lost power, and three others suffered damage. This is because much of the island nation’s infrastructure was not built to withstand such strong gusts of wind.
The impact of the hurricane was not limited to buildings: in St. Elizabeth — the southwestern part of Jamaica — where Hurricane Melissa first struck, villages were decimated and residents were either trapped or displaced. More than 500,000 people, roughly one-sixth of the population, were left without power on October 28. As of November 1, the number of people killed in Jamaica as a direct result of Hurricane Melissa had risen to 28, according to the Prime Minister’s office. This number may still grow in the coming days as rescue teams continue to assess remote and severely affected areas. The storm will be particularly devastating for Jamaica’s agricultural and tourism sectors, as both will likely face lasting economic consequences.
Furthermore, with Jamaica’s renown as a tourist destination in the Caribbean, many tourists were also affected by Melissa. Approximately 25,000 international tourists were trapped on the island as airports closed due to the hurricane. According to Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, no tourists were reported to have suffered casualties.
While Melissa weakened following its peak on October 28, it was still producing winds of around 130 km/h (80 mph) on October 30 as it hovered over the Atlantic toward Canada. On Halloween night, parts of Quebec, including Montreal, were affected by steady rain and cold winds, the same that had passed through the Caribbean earlier that week.
Though Melissa’s influence was only minimal in Canada, it echoed a growing trend of intense storms affecting the Maritimes provinces. Two years earlier, in 2023, a powerful winter windstorm swept across the Maritimes, cutting power to over 100,000 Nova Scotian residents and leaving parts of the region plunged in darkness for days. Crews worked through fallen trees and flooded roads to restore electricity, while families gathered in community centres that had been turned into emergency shelters.
Still in 2023, wind gusts reached 120 km/h at the Eskasoni First Nation in Cape Breton and 102 km/h at CFB Greenwood. In Cheticamp, temperatures rose to 18.5°C, breaking a record set in 1966, according to Environment Canada. The storm plunged parts of the Maritimes into darkness, serving as a sharp reminder of the region’s vulnerability to the growing instability of Atlantic weather.
Meteorologists have emphasized that Hurricane Melissa’s rapid and unusual intensification reflect a wider trend in tropical storm behaviour. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) noted that rising ocean temperatures and shifting wind patterns in the Atlantic are creating conditions for more frequent Category Four and Five hurricanes. Researchers from Environment and Climate Change Canada added that these same atmospheric forces can amplify fall and winter storms in Canada, underscoring the interconnection of climate systems across the region.
Ultimately, Hurricane Melissa sounded the alarm on how smaller nations — despite contributing significantly less to climate change — are bearing the heaviest burden of climate disasters. From the devastated communities of Jamaica to the power-less communities of the Maritimes, these meteorological events call attention to the shared consequences of a changing climate and the growing urgency of resilience and mitigation efforts.