AccuWeather's lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva was live on the AccuWeather Network on Oct. 29 to discuss what is next for the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.

The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season has been marked by an unusually high number of intense storms, including three Category 5 hurricanes—a record matched only once before in 2005. Hurricane Melissa stands out for its intensity, ranking third in Atlantic history by pressure and tying for second in wind speed among recorded storms. 

Most storms this season have avoided land, with only Hurricane Chantal making direct landfall in the United States. As the season continues, meteorologists are monitoring the western Caribbean and southern Gulf, where warm water temperatures could support further storm development. However, increased wind shear typical of this period makes long-lived storms less likely, and any new activity is expected to be short-lived or localized.

What's next for the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season

Alex, we'll talk a little bit about Melissa and historically how Melissa shapes up to other damaging storms here, but first, kind of want to take a look at the overall season and you know, before Melissa hit, you and I were talking a couple of weeks ago, we saw that the wave coming off Africa, if it could stay in the Caribbean, it would be the one to watch for and as of now, and it may be, although there's other possibilities, this is the only storm that we've seen in the Caribbean this year. Yeah, it's been a very, very impressive season so far. It's almost been feast or famine. We've seen a lot of tropical storms, but we've also seen a lot of high-end hurricanes and in fact, this is now the second year on record that we've seen three category five hurricanes in the same year. 2005 is the other year that saw three cat fives, so a very, very impressive season that we've seen so far. Luckily, most of the storms have avoided land. Some of course have come close enough to the United States where they did bring some direct impacts, but we only saw one direct landfall on the United States so far and that was Chantal. All right, let's take a look at Melissa as far as the history books are concerned. We talk about, there's a couple of ways we can measure the intensity of a hurricane. Let's begin with the pressure. Yeah, the pressure, essentially as a storm strengthens, that pressure in the center of the storm in that eye really, really lowers, lowers really far down. It's almost like you're kind of driving up a mountain and then your ears start to pop. That's essentially what's going on in the middle of the hurricane and this is what we have. These are the top hurricanes on record in the Atlantic by pressure and you can see Melissa is third in line there behind Wilma and Gilbert on the pressure list and then in terms of intensity for wind speed, Melissa is actually tied for second all time in the tropical Atlantic. There's a lot of storms there that are tied with 185 mile per hour sustained winds. All right, including the strongest hurricane ever to make landfall in the United States, the Labor Day Hurricane 1935. That is an infamous hurricane that made landfall in the Keys. All right, as we go forward, let's talk about the month of November and we were talking about it off camera that the long term average is a storm every other year, but in the short term, it seems more like it's a storm a year that we get during the month of November. Yeah, and I think a lot of that actually has to do with the water temperatures. In more recent years, the water temperatures have been a little bit higher, which has given the atmosphere just that little bit of juice that it needs to produce a storm or two during the month of November, where in the past maybe those waters were a little bit cooler. So water temperatures are still warm, maybe not in the Central Caribbean where this storm went by, but Southern Gulf and in the Western Caribbean, the waters are still warm. So I really think those are going to be more of the areas to focus on. More out into the Atlantic is becoming less likely, especially you look here, mid-November, the areas become much closer to the United States during middle of November. So overall, I think we're going to have to watch the Western Caribbean. There are signs that maybe something may try to develop there later this month. But there's nothing unusual about that. Those are the areas that we're really looking at. And it may be the end of the African wave train, any of these storms, unless they could survive and come into the Caribbean, as we mentioned. But you look at the water vapor loop, there's some pockets of dry air that would inhibit any kind of development. But really the big story is, I mean, this is what you start seeing during the month of November, a lot of wind shear. Yeah, and that's why typically during the month of November, we really don't see a whole lot of activity, or they're very short-lived tropical storms or hurricanes for the most part. It's very hard to get a very long-tracked storm during the month of November. It has happened, but it is harder, just because the fact that you usually have more widespread wind shear. The lowest wind shear in the basin during the month of November is usually located in the Central or Western Caribbean, you know, and so that's why we think that if anything is going to happen, this is the area that we would be focusing on. We're not outlooking a specific time frame at the current time, but just overall during probably the first half of November, this is generally the area that we would want to take a look at. And this can come from two ways. One, maybe a tropical wave makes it all the way into the Western Caribbean and is able to develop. Or the second way, if we start to really get that Central American gyre to start spinning in there, something can develop off of that.

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