Hurricane Sandra moved around the western end of a subtropical ridge and turned toward Mexico on Thursday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Thursday the center of Hurricane Sandra was located at latitude 18.0\u00b0N and longitude 109.7\u00b0W which put it about 340 miles (545 km) south of the southern tip of Baja California and about 490 miles (790 km) south-southwest of Culiacan, Mexico.\u00a0 Sandra was moving toward the north at 13 m.p.h. (20 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 120 m.p.h. (195 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 150 m.p.h. (240 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 956 mb.\u00a0 The government of Mexico issued a Tropical Storm Watch for the coast of Baja California from Todos Santos to Los Barriles.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Sandra appeared to develop concentric eyewalls on Thursday.\u00a0 A primary rainband wrapped around the tiny pinhole eye at the center of the hurricane.\u00a0 Satellite imagery suggests that the tiny inner eye still exists inside the larger outer eye.\u00a0 Sandra reached Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale on Thursday morning, but the formation of concentric eyewalls weakened the hurricane back to Category 3 later in the day.\u00a0 Sandra remains a well organized hurricane.\u00a0 It has a well defined core surrounded by a ring of strong thunderstorms.\u00a0 Spiral bands of storms are in the northeastern quadrant of the circulation.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Sandra will move into a less favorable environment on Friday.\u00a0 It will be over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 29\u00b0C.\u00a0 However, a large upper level trough along the west coast of North America will generate strong southwesterly winds.\u00a0 Those winds will cause strong vertical wind shear, which will tilt the circulation toward the northeast.\u00a0 The upper level winds will also inhibit upper level divergence from the western part of Sandra.\u00a0 The strong wind shear will weaken Hurricane Sandra on Friday.\u00a0 Some models are predicting that the shear could be strong enough to blow the middle and upper parts of the circulation northeast of the low level circulation.\u00a0 If that happens, then Hurricane Sandy could weaken very quickly,<\/p>\n
The upper level trough will steer Hurricane Sandra toward the northeast on Friday.\u00a0 Sandra will likely move faster toward the northeast by Friday night.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Sandra could be near the southern tip of Baja California by Friday night and it could approach the west coast of Mexico on Saturday.\u00a0 Sandra could still be a hurricane when it nears Baja California, but it is more likely to be a tropical storm.\u00a0 It could be a tropical storm or depression by the time it reaches the west coast of Mexico.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hurricane Sandra moved around the western end of a subtropical ridge and turned toward Mexico on Thursday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Thursday the center of Hurricane Sandra was located at latitude 18.0\u00b0N and longitude 109.7\u00b0W which put it about 340 miles (545 km) south of the southern tip of Baja California and about 490 […]<\/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":[288,39,289,291,24,112],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993"}],"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=1993"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1994,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993\/revisions\/1994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}