Because of AI
Because of AI

Because of AI, the Hurricane Center called a Category 5 landfall in Jamaica about three days out, while Melissa was still a Category 1.

~3 days' warning on a Cat 5
evidence B · observationalattribution isolatedwindow in window
AchievedOct 25–28, 2025Published

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.

There is no lives-saved number and cannot be; the measured outcome is forecast skill, and the final call was made by human forecasters using the model.

Compared with
DeepMind ensemble vs all other operational models and the NHC official forecast, full 2025 Atlantic season verification
Effect
Lowest season track and intensity error of any model; roughly one extra day of forecast accuracy in 2023–2025 hindcasts
Reach
Jamaica (pop. ~2.8M), Haiti, Cuba, Bahamas; 2025 Atlantic season
Domain
Disaster · Classic ML
Conflicts
Google partnered with NHC to train and evaluate the model; verification stats are from NHC and an independent former NHC branch chief.
What would move the grade
A published NHC verification report quantifying the official forecast's error with and without the DeepMind input would move attribution from isolated toward a hard number.

Sources

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

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