As Hurricane Melissa made landfall, a daring team of aviators flew straight into the eye of the monstrous Category 5 storm.
On Monday, a US Air Force reserve crew from the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, nicknamed the “Hurricane Hunters,” shared videos and images of their flight inside the cyclone to collect vital weather data.
The stunning imagery depicts the almost unearthly serenity at the eye of the cyclone, as well as the epic “stadium effect” created by the towering wall of clouds that enclose it. Though this “eyewall,” as meteorologists call it, appears to be moving slowly, the ringed region is in reality brimming with the storm’s most vicious winds. Another set of breathtaking photos taken by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite look straight down into the eye at the height of its powers.
This footage from inside the eye of Category 5 Hurricane Melissa might be the most jaw-dropping video ever captured of a hurricane’s eye, showcasing the infamous “stadium effect." pic.twitter.com/AEhj2g2Ban — Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) October 27, 2025
These winds proved a little too much for even the seasoned crew of the Hurricane Hunters, who filmed some of the flight’s rockiest moments. Midway through their Monday expedition, the team turned around early and returned to its base in Curaçao due to severe turbulence, the National Hurricane Center said, per ABC News. On a follow-up flight the next day, the team was once again battered by extreme turbulence and forced to make an early return.
“My first time ever in a Category 5, and it was definitely the most turbulent I’ve ever experienced,” Andy Hazelton, a scientist at the University of Miami on the flight, tweeted after the Monday expedition.
Hurricane Melissa, at some ten miles in diameter, is one of the most powerful Atlantic storms to make landfall on record. As it bore down on Jamaica on Tuesday, it reached sustained wind speeds of 185 miles per hour and gusts that reached 215 mph, sowing destruction across the island nation that still hasn’t been fully accounted for.
The Jamaican government declared the country a disaster area, with at least one parish said to be “under water” and 15,000 people in government shelters, according to the New York Times, citing officials. In Haiti, where the hurricane did not make landfall but still blasted it with heavy rain, at least 25 people were killed after a flooded river burst its banks, CNN reported.
Melissa has slowed down to a Category 2 storm and is now heaving itself across Cuba, where hundreds of thousands of people have evacuated from areas expected to bear the worst of the hurricane’s beatings. After it moves on from Cuba, it’s projected to close in on the Bahamas.
👁️ The eye of the storm.
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