2025 Hurricane Season Brings Fewer Storms, Fiercer Impact

We’re just a week away from wrapping up the 2025 hurricane season, and it’s been a mixed bag for the Caribbean. While the number of storms was slightly below average, the ones that did form packed a historic punch. The most devastating was Category Five Hurricane Melissa, which slammed Jamaica in the season’s final weeks, leaving behind more than eight billion dollars in damage. As the season winds down, we checked in with Chief Meteorologist Ronald Gordon at the National Meteorological Service. He says the data shows it’s unlikely we’ll see another storm, but Belizeans should stay prepared, just in case.

 

Ronald Gordon, Chief Meteorologist, National Meteorological Service

“For us it has been very good. And in terms of the overall numbers we had thirteen named storms total forming in 2025. The normal is fpurteen, so we were one below normal. In terms of hurricanes, we had five hurricanes forming, and the normal is for there to be seven, so that’s a bit also below normal. Then certainly when it came to major hurricane, that’s where the picture changes because we’ve had four major hurricanes, of those five, four became major and three category five actually. So in terms of major hurricanes, it has been quite active this particular season. And of course we are all familiar with the last one, which was Hurricane Melissa. A very devastating hurricane category five strength that impacted our neighbors in Jamaica.”

 

Britney Gordon

“Does the data coincide with the predictions that the climate experts have been seeing for years that storms are getting faster and stronger, the four that we had this year, did they meet those criteria?”

 

Ronald Gordon

“One of the things that the climate models have shown is that even though we may not get more transforming. The ones that do form would become very intense and develop explosively. So certainly that coincide with what those models were always telling us. We could possibly get intense showers out on the storms in December and even January, which may have produced localized flooding. However, and also when we move into the other part of the, our season, which is a dry season in February March and April, we do have other hazards which become the drought and the drier conditions, the heat, and of course the are impacts resulting from those, which is far as fires. So weather is an earlier own situation. And as we and our partners at NEMO say, we must be being vigilant, unprepared at all times.”