Hurricane Melissa, the strongest cyclone to hit Jamaica in decades, has caused significant power and telecommunications outages, severely disrupting communications across the island. Network monitoring agency NetBlocks reported that national network connectivity plummeted to about 30% of normal levels due to strong winds and line breaks. Amid these disruptions, the peer-to-peer messaging app Bitchat, which functions without an internet connection, saw a surge in downloads. According to AppFigures, Bitchat topped the social networking app charts for Apple users in Jamaica and ranked second in the overall free app charts for both Apple and Android. Calle, the app's developer, noted on the X platform that this marks the first instance of a download surge driven by a natural disaster.