Hurricane Patricia continued to intensify very rapidly on Thursday night and it reached Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Hurricane Patricia was located at latitude 16.2\u00b0N and longitude 105.1\u00b0W which put it about 200 miles (320 km) south-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico.\u00a0 Patricia was moving toward the north-northwest at 10 m.p.h.\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 160 m.p.h. (260 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 195 m.p.h. (315 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 924 mb.<\/p>\n
The government of Mexico has issued a Hurricane Warning for the portion of the coast from San Blas to Punta San Telmo.\u00a0 A Hurricane Watch and a Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the portion of the coast from Punta San Telmo to Lazaro Cardenas.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Patricia has a Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) of 35.0.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) is 12.4 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) is 47.4.\u00a0 Those indices mean that Hurricane Patricia is capable of causing catastrophic regional damage.\u00a0 Hurricane Patricia is currently about the same size that Hurricane Dennis was before Dennis hit the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico in 2005.\u00a0 However, Patricia is stronger than Dennis was at that time.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Patricia remains in an environment with warm Sea Surface Temperatures and little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Only an eyewall replacement cycle could cause weakening in the short term.\u00a0 When Hurricane Patricia moves farther north, it will start to encounter upper level winds blowing from the southwest, which will increase the wind shear.\u00a0 The wind shear could start to weaken Patricia later on Friday.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Patricia is moving around the western end of ridge and the hurricane has turned toward the north.\u00a0 When Patricia encounters the southwesterly winds in the upper levels, it will turn toward the northeast.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Hurricane Patricia could make landfall on the west coast of Mexico between San Blas and Boca de Apiza on Friday night.\u00a0 Even though Hurricane Patricia could weaken somewhat before it makes landfall, it will still be a very dangerous hurricane.\u00a0 Hurricane Patricia poses a major threat to cause significant regional wind damage and a storm surge at the coast.\u00a0 Heavy rain could produce serious flooding, especially as Patricia moves inland over steeper terrain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hurricane Patricia continued to intensify very rapidly on Thursday night and it reached Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Hurricane Patricia was located at latitude 16.2\u00b0N and longitude 105.1\u00b0W which put it about 200 miles (320 km) south-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico.\u00a0 Patricia was moving toward the […]<\/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":[251,252,253,24,112],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817"}],"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=1817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1818,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817\/revisions\/1818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}