diff --git a/HISTORY.md b/HISTORY.md
index 5127ff7aa..5435a1a98 100644
--- a/HISTORY.md
+++ b/HISTORY.md
@@ -1,4 +1,8 @@
 # Rocksdb Change Log
+## Unreleased
+### Bug Fixes
+* Avoid creating empty SSTs and subsequently deleting them in certain cases during compaction.
+
 ## 5.15.6 (8/21/2018)
 ### Public API Change
 * The merge operands are passed to `MergeOperator::ShouldMerge` in the reversed order relative to how they were merged (passed to FullMerge or FullMergeV2) for performance reasons
diff --git a/db/compaction_job.cc b/db/compaction_job.cc
index 94c6762a2..aecbecb25 100644
--- a/db/compaction_job.cc
+++ b/db/compaction_job.cc
@@ -1075,7 +1075,8 @@ void CompactionJob::ProcessKeyValueCompaction(SubcompactionState* sub_compact) {
   }
 
   if (status.ok() && sub_compact->builder == nullptr &&
-      sub_compact->outputs.size() == 0) {
+      sub_compact->outputs.size() == 0 &&
+      !range_del_agg->IsEmpty()) {
     // handle subcompaction containing only range deletions
     status = OpenCompactionOutputFile(sub_compact);
   }