Hurricane Linda rapidly intensified on Tuesday and it now has a wind speed that qualifies it as a Category 3 Hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 This makes Linda the fifth major hurricane in the Eastern North Pacific in 2015.\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Tuesday the center of Hurricane Linda was located at latitude 21.3\u00b0N and longitude 113.9\u00b0W which put it about 280 miles (450 km) west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California.\u00a0 Linda was moving toward the north-northwest at 14 m.p.h. (22 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 120 m.p.h. (195 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 140 m.p.h. (225 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 956 mb.<\/p>\n
Upper level winds over Linda decreased and the reduction in vertical wind shear allowed it to intensify rapidly during the past 12 hours.\u00a0 A visible eye and symmetrical eyewall are evidence of a well organized inner core.\u00a0 Thunderstorms near the center of circulation are generating upper level divergence in all directions which is pumping out mass and causing the pressure to decrease.\u00a0 Linda could intensify for a few more hours, but it will start to move over much cooler Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) later today.\u00a0 It will be unable to extract enough energy from the cooler water to maintain its intensity and Linda will start to weaken.\u00a0 As Linda moves farther north, it will also start to encounter stronger upper level winds around the southern portion of an upper level trough near the west coast of the U.S.\u00a0 Increased vertical wind shear in addition to cooler SSTs will speed up the rate at which Linda weakens.\u00a0 Since Linda has a large circulation, it could take longer for it to spin down.<\/p>\n
An upper level ridge over Mexico is steering Linda toward the north-northwest and that general motion is expected to continue as long as it maintains tall thunderstorms.\u00a0 When Linda weakens to a tropical storm over cooler water, the circulation will not extend as high in the atmosphere.\u00a0 After that time Linda will be steered more toward the west by winds lower in the atmosphere.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Linda will move parallel to the coast of Baja California for several days before turning away from the coast later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hurricane Linda rapidly intensified on Tuesday and it now has a wind speed that qualifies it as a Category 3 Hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 This makes Linda the fifth major hurricane in the Eastern North Pacific in 2015.\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Tuesday the center of Hurricane Linda was located at latitude 21.3\u00b0N […]<\/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":[163,164,168,24,40],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545"}],"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=1545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1546,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions\/1546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}