~3days' warning on a Cat 5
Because of AI, the Hurricane Center called a Category 5 landfall in Jamaica about three days out, while Melissa was still a Category 1.
NHC forecasters explicitly forecast Category 5 intensity while Melissa was an 80-mph Category 1, largely on the strength of Google DeepMind's cyclone model, which posted the lowest track and intensity errors of any model for the 2025 Atlantic season and kept the official forecast below its five-year average error while NOAA's GFS had its worst year in two decades.
Sources
- primaryNWS: AI hurricane forecasting Q&A (2025 season)weather.gov
- primaryMichael Lowry: Two forecast models stand out (2025 season verification)michaelrlowry.substack.com
3 secondary sources
- secondaryNPR: The future of hurricane forecasting is AInpr.org
- secondaryCNN: Why NHC bet big on AI to forecast Isaias (Oct 2026)cnn.com
- secondaryGizmodo: WeatherNext Cyclones gives an extra day of warninggizmodo.com
Editor's notes
verify: exact NHC advisory time of the first explicit Cat 5 forecast; final Jamaica death toll and any evacuation-timing analysis.
Related
History
- Added.
Cite this entry
Permalink https://becauseofai.org/entry/hurricane-melissa-2025
“Because of AI, the Hurricane Center called a Category 5 landfall in Jamaica about three days out, while Melissa was still a Category 1.” Because of AI, updated Oct 22, 2026. https://becauseofai.org/entry/hurricane-melissa-2025@misc{becauseofai_hurricane_melissa_2025,
title = {Because of AI, the Hurricane Center called a Category 5 landfall in Jamaica about three days out, while Melissa was still a Category 1.},
howpublished = {\url{https://becauseofai.org/entry/hurricane-melissa-2025}},
note = {Because of AI registry, updated Oct 22, 2026},
year = {2026}
}