Hurricane Blanca intensified very rapidly on Wednesday into a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday the center of Hurricane Blanca was located at latitude 12.3\u00b0N and longitude 104.7\u00b0W which put it about 810 miles (1300 km) south-southeast of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and about 465 miles (745 km) south of Manzanillo, Mexico.\u00a0 Blanca drifted slowly southward during the day, but it is essentially stationary.\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 140 m.p.h. (220 km\/h) and there were gusts to 165 m.p.h. (270 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 945 mb.\u00a0 Blanca had a Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) of 28.3, a Hurricane Size Index (HSI) of 8.6 and a Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) of 36.9.\u00a0 Blanca is almost as strong and slightly larger than Hurricane Charley was when it hit southwest Florida in 2004.\u00a0 At that time Charley had a HII of 29.9, a HSI of 7.7 and a HWISI of 37.6.<\/p>\n
Blanca intensified from 75 m.p.h. (120 km\/h) to 140 m.p.h. (220 km\/h) during the past 24 hours which is a very rapid rate of intensification.\u00a0 However, it is nowhere near the record for rapid intensification over the Eastern North Pacific.\u00a0 In 1997 the maximum sustained wind speed in Hurricane Linda increased from 75 m.p.h. (120 km\/h) to 175 m.p.h. (290 km\/h) in a 24 hour period.\u00a0 Blanca’s relatively small size means that there is less mass to accelerate in order to increase the wind speed.\u00a0 It has efficiently extracted energy from the upper ocean and the wind speed in the small inner core increased rapidly today.\u00a0 It is over water where the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 If Blanca were to remain stationary long enough, its winds would mix some cooler water to the surface.\u00a0 Some subsidence and drier air is approaching the northwestern periphery of Blanca, but that air appears to have not had an effect on the core of the hurricane today.\u00a0 Upper level winds are light right over the center of Blanca and there is little vertical wind shear over its inner core.\u00a0 As long as Blanca can extract sufficient energy from the upper ocean, the potential for further intensification exists.\u00a0 Much of the guidance suggests that Blanca could intensify for another 12 to 24 hours.\u00a0 However, eyewall replacement cycles can occur in strong hurricanes and cause fluctuations in intensity.\u00a0 Changes in intensity in small hurricanes can occur rapidly as we have seen today.\u00a0 Eventually, when Blanca starts to move northward, it will encounter cooler SSTs and more wind shear which will cause it to weaken.<\/p>\n
A ridge over Baja California is preventing Blanca from moving toward the north.\u00a0 The hurricane is in an area where the steering currents are weak, which resulted in a slow southward drift today.\u00a0 The ridge is forecast to shift to the east during the next several days and it will start to steer Blanca toward the northwest.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Blanca could approach the southern tip of Baja California late in the weekend.\u00a0 Because of a possible threat to Baja California a reconnaissance plane has been scheduled to investigate Blanca on Friday.\u00a0 Blanca will weaken before it approaches that area, but it may still posed a significant risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hurricane Blanca intensified very rapidly on Wednesday into a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday the center of Hurricane Blanca was located at latitude 12.3\u00b0N and longitude 104.7\u00b0W which put it about 810 miles (1300 km) south-southeast of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and about 465 miles (745 km) […]<\/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":[39,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899"}],"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=899"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":901,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions\/901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}