Hurricane Fernanda intensified rapidly to Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale on Friday.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday the center of Hurricane Fernanda was located at latitude 10.7\u00b0N and longitude 119.7\u00b0W which put it about 1060 miles (1710 km) southwest of the southern tip of Baja California.\u00a0 Fernanda was moving toward the west at 12 m.p.h. (19 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 130 m.p.h. (215 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 155 m.p.h. (250 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 960 mb.<\/p>\n
A clear circular eye formed at the center of Hurricane Fernanda.\u00a0 The eye is surrounded by a ring of very strong thunderstorms and the strongest winds are occurring in the eyewall.\u00a0 Additional bands of showers and thunderstorms formed outside the core of Fernanda.\u00a0 There are more bands in the eastern half of the hurricane, but the overall circulation is fairly symmetrical.\u00a0 The thunderstorms in the core of Fernanda are generating strong upper level divergence which is pumping mass away from the hurricane.<\/p>\n
Fernanda is a small hurricane.\u00a0 Winds to hurricane force only extend out about 25 miles (40 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force only extend out about 70 miles (110 km) from the center.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) is 25.1.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) is 9.0 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) is 34.1.\u00a0 The indices indicate that Hurricane Fernanda is somewhat similar in size and strength to Hurricane Charley in 2004 when Charley was approaching the southwest coast of Florida.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Fernanda will remain in an environment very favorable for intensification for another 24 to 48 hours.\u00a0 It will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is near 28.5\u00b0C.\u00a0 The upper level winds are weak and there is little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Hurricane Fernanda has a chance to intensify into a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale before it moves into a less favorable environment.\u00a0 When a hurricane becomes as intense as Hurricane Fernanda is, an outer rainband can wrap around the eye and an eyewall replacement cycle can occur.\u00a0 If an eyewall replacement cycle occurs in Hurricane Fernanda, then fluctuations in intensity may also happen.\u00a0 Eventually Fernanda will move over cooler SSTs and the hurricane will start to weaken.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Fernanda is moving south of a subtropical ridge and the ridge is steering the hurricane a little south of due west.\u00a0 A general westward motion is forecast to continue during the next few days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Hurricane Fernanda will continue to move farther away from Mexico.\u00a0 Fernanda could approach Hawaii by the end of next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hurricane Fernanda intensified rapidly to Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale on Friday.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday the center of Hurricane Fernanda was located at latitude 10.7\u00b0N and longitude 119.7\u00b0W which put it about 1060 miles (1710 km) southwest of the southern tip of Baja California.\u00a0 Fernanda was moving toward the west at […]<\/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":[422,39,423,23,728,650,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243"}],"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=4243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4244,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243\/revisions\/4244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}