Hurricane Karina rapidly intensified to a major hurricane on Sunday evening as it moved over the Eastern North Pacific Ocean southwest of Baja California.\u00a0 At 8:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday the center of Hurricane Karina was located at latitude 17.2\u00b0N and longitude 123.4\u00b0W which put the center about 960 miles (1545 km) west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California.\u00a0 Karina was moving toward the west at 9 m.p.h. (15 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 125 m.p.h. (200 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 150 m.p.h. (240 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 955 mb.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Karina rapidly intensified to a major hurricane on Sunday evening.\u00a0 The inner end of a rainband wrapped around the center of Karina’s circulation.\u00a0 A circular eye with a diameter of 25 miles (40 km) formed at the center of Hurricane Karina.\u00a0 The eye was surrounded by a ring of thunderstorms and the strongest winds were occurring in that ring of storms.\u00a0 Bands of showers and thunderstorms were revolving around the core of Karina’s circulation.\u00a0 Storms near the core of Karina generated strong upper level divergence that pumped large amounts of mass away from the hurricane.\u00a0 The removal of large amounts of mass caused the surface pressure to decrease rapidly.<\/p>\n
The inner core of Hurricane Karina was very small.\u00a0 Winds to hurricane force extended out 15 miles (25 km) from the center of Karina’s circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out 205 miles (335 km) from the center of Hurricane Karina.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Karina will move through an environment mostly favorable for intensification during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 Karina will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperatures are near 29\u00b0C.\u00a0 It will move through a region where the upper level winds are weak and there will be little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 However, there is a mass of drier air just to the west and north of Hurricane Karina.\u00a0 The drier air will inhibit intensification of Karina, but the drier air probably will not be enough to prevent intensification.\u00a0 Hurricane Karina is likely to intensify during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 Karina could continue to intensify rapidly during the next few hours, if the drier air does not get pulled into its circulation.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Karina will move around the southern part of a high pressure system that is over the Eastern North Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 The high pressure system will steer Karina toward the west-northwest during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 On its anticipated track, Hurricane Karina will move farther away from Baja California.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, Tropical Storm Lowell moved over the Central Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday the center of Tropical Storm Lowell was located at latitude 13.3\u00b0N and longitude 141.8\u00b0W which put the center about 985 miles (1585 km) east-southeast Hilo, Hawaii.\u00a0 Lowell was moving toward the west at 13 m.p.h. (21 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 65 m.p.h. (105 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 999 mb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hurricane Karina rapidly intensified to a major hurricane on Sunday evening as it moved over the Eastern North Pacific Ocean southwest of Baja California.\u00a0 At 8:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday the center of Hurricane Karina was located at latitude 17.2\u00b0N and longitude 123.4\u00b0W which put the center about 960 miles (1545 km) west-southwest of 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":[456,150,39,457,470,23,1124,4216,2209,2242,16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25091"}],"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=25091"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25092,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25091\/revisions\/25092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}