Hurricane Aletta rapidly intensified Friday morning to Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Friday the center of Hurricane Aletta was located at latitude 15.8\u00b0N and longitude 111.2\u00b0W which put it about 505 miles (815 km) west-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico.\u00a0 Aletta was moving toward the west at 5 m.p.h. (8 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 140 m.p.h. (220 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 165 m.p.h. (265 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 943 mb.<\/p>\n
An environment with warm Sea Surface Temperatures and little vertical wind shear allowed Hurricane Aletta to intensify rapidly during Thursday night and Friday morning.\u00a0 A small circular eye was evident at the center of circulation.\u00a0 A tight ring of strong thunderstorms completely surrounded the eye and the strongest winds were occurring in that ring of storms.\u00a0 Several bands of strong storms were revolving around the eastern and northern sides of the core of Hurricane Aletta.\u00a0 Storms around the core were generating very strong upper level divergence which was pumping away large quantities of mass from the hurricane.\u00a0 The removal of mass allowed the pressure to decrease rapidly and a stronger pressure gradient force generated much stronger winds.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Aletta has a relatively small circulation.\u00a0 Winds to hurricane force extended out about 30 miles (50 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out about 100 miles (160 km) from the center.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) was 28.3.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) was 10.8 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) was 39.1.\u00a0 Hurricane Aletta is very similar in intensity and size to Hurricane Charley in 2004 when Charley hit southwest Florida.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Aletta will remain in a favorable environment of warm water and little vertical wind shear for another 12 to 24 hours.\u00a0 So, it could strengthen more in the short term.\u00a0 Aletta will start to move over cooler water during the next day or so.\u00a0 There will be less energy in the upper ocean to support the intense hurricane.\u00a0 In addition, a upper level trough to the northwest of Aletta will produce southwesterly winds which will blow toward the top of the circulation.\u00a0 Increased vertical wind shear will speed up the rate of weakening.\u00a0 Since the circulation of Hurricane Aletta is relatively small, it could weaken fairly quickly.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Aletta is moving around the southwestern part of a ridge over Mexico.\u00a0 The ridge has been steering Aletta toward the west.\u00a0 A turn more toward the northwest is expected when Hurricane Aletta nears the western end of the ridge.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Hurricane Aletta is forecast to move farther away from the west coast of Mexico.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hurricane Aletta rapidly intensified Friday morning to Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Friday the center of Hurricane Aletta was located at latitude 15.8\u00b0N and longitude 111.2\u00b0W which put it about 505 miles (815 km) west-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico.\u00a0 Aletta was moving toward the west at 5 m.p.h. (8 km\/h).\u00a0 […]<\/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":[399,1030,39,1028,400,23,1029,650,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5987"}],"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=5987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5988,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5987\/revisions\/5988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}