Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on October 28, 2025, as a category 5 storm, bringing sustained winds of 295 kilometers (185 miles) per hour and leaving a broad path of destruction on the island. The storm displaced tens of thousands of people, damaged or destroyed more than 100,000 structures, inflicted costly damage on farmland, and left the nation’s forests brown and battered.
Prior to landfall, in the waters south of the island, the hurricane created a large-scale natural oceanography experiment. Before encountering land and proceeding north, the monster storm crawled over the Caribbean Sea, churning up the water below. A couple of days later, a break in the clouds revealed what researchers believe could be a once-in-a-century event.
On October 30, 2025, the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this image (right) of the waters south of Jamaica. Vast areas are colored bright blue by sediment stirred up from a carbonate platform called Pedro Bank. This plateau, submerged under about 25 meters (80 feet) of water, is slightly larger in area than the state of Delaware. For comparison, the left image was acquired by the same sensor on September 20, before the storm.
Pedro Bank is deep enough that it is only faintly visible in natural color satellite images most of the time. However, with enough disruption from hurricanes or strong cold fronts, its existence becomes more evident to satellites. Suspended calcium carbonate (CaCO3) mud, consisting primarily of remnants of marine organisms that live on the plateau, turns the water a Maya blue …