Despite vertical wind shear caused by the outflow from Hurricane Andres, the low level circulation of Tropical Depression Two-E continued to consolidate and the National Hurricane Center upgraded the system to Tropical Storm Blanca.\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Monday the center of Tropical Storm Blanca was located at latitude 13.5\u00b0N and longitude 104.1\u00b0W which put it about 335 miles (540 km) south-southwest of Zihuatanejo, Mexico.\u00a0 Blanca was moving toward the northwest at 5 m.p.h. (7 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 40 m.p.h. (65 km\/h) and there were gusts to 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 1004 mb.<\/p>\n
Upper level divergence from Hurricane Andres, which is about 1000 miles west of Blanca, is still generating some vertical wind shear over the top of Blanca.\u00a0 However, the strongest upper level outflow and wind shear is now several hundred miles north of the tropical storm.\u00a0 As a result, Blanca has been able to efficiently extract energy from the upper ocean and it has generated many more thunderstorms in recent hours.\u00a0 The circulation has developed spiral bands and an inner core of convection.\u00a0 The strong thunderstorms near the core appear to be generating some upper level outflow which is pumping out mass and causing the surface pressure to decrease.\u00a0 Blanca is over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C and there is a lot of energy in the upper ocean.\u00a0 Blanca is likely to intensify and it could intensify rapidly if the magnitude of the wind shear remains moderate or low.<\/p>\n
Blanca is being steered slowly toward the northwest by a ridge over northern Mexico, but the steering currents are relatively weak.\u00a0 The ridge is expected to strengthen during the week and steer Blanca toward the northwest or north-northwest.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Blanca poses no immediate threat to Mexico.\u00a0 However, it could approach Baja California or the western coast of Mexico later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite vertical wind shear caused by the outflow from Hurricane Andres, the low level circulation of Tropical Depression Two-E continued to consolidate and the National Hurricane Center upgraded the system to Tropical Storm Blanca.\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Monday the center of Tropical Storm Blanca was located at latitude 13.5\u00b0N and longitude 104.1\u00b0W which […]<\/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":[24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884"}],"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=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":885,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions\/885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}