Hurricane Hilda continued to move steadily westward on Saturday and when it moved west of longitude 140\u00b0W, Hilda officially crossed into the Central Pacific.\u00a0 At that time the responsibility for issuing advisories on Hilda shifted from the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Hurricane Hilda was located at latitude 13.7\u00b0N and longitude 143.5\u00b0W which put it about 870 miles (1400 km) east-southeast of Hilo, Hawaii.\u00a0 Hilda was moving toward the west at 15 m.p.h. (24 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 140 m.p.h. (220 km\/h) which made Hilda a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale and qualified it as a Major Hurricane.\u00a0 There were wind gusts to 165 m.p.h. (270 km\/h) and the minimum surface pressure was 946 mb.<\/p>\n
Hilda is moving over water where the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is near 28\u00b0C.\u00a0 The upper level winds are light and there is not much vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Although Hilda is a small hurricane, it is generating upper level divergence in all directions for the center.\u00a0 Hilda will remain in a favorable environment for another day or so and it could intensify further during that time.\u00a0 When it moves farther west, it will move into an area where upper level winds are blowing from the west.\u00a0 Those winds will cause vertical wind shear and weaken Hilda.\u00a0 Because of the small size of the circulation Hilda could weaken faster than a larger hurricane would.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge is steering Hilda toward the west and that general steering pattern is expected to continue for another 24 to 48 hours.\u00a0 When Hilda encounters the upper level westerly winds, those winds will deflect it onto a more northwesterly track.\u00a0 When Hilda weakens and the thunderstorms do not extend as high, then winds in the lower levels will push it more toward the west again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hurricane Hilda continued to move steadily westward on Saturday and when it moved west of longitude 140\u00b0W, Hilda officially crossed into the Central Pacific.\u00a0 At that time the responsibility for issuing advisories on Hilda shifted from the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[23],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1292,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions\/1292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}