A combination of upwelling of cooler water and a possible eyewall replacement weakened Hurricane Blanca on Thursday.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Hurricane Blanca was located at latitude 13.7\u00b0N and longitude 105.7\u00b0W which put it about 690 (1115 km) miles south-southeast of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and about 380 (610 km) miles south-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico.\u00a0 Blanca was moving toward the north-northwest at 8 m.p.h. (13 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 100 m.p.h. (160 km\/h) and there were gusts to 120 m.p.h. (195 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 975 mb.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) was 16.5, the Hurricane Size Index (HSI) was 16.1 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index was 32.6.<\/p>\n
The structure of Hurricane Blanca underwent a significant transformation on Thursday.\u00a0 After being nearly stationary for approximately three days, the winds of Blanca stirred up the water in the upper ocean and mixed cooler water to the surface.\u00a0 The cooler water reduced the energy available to drive the circulation of Blanca.\u00a0 In addition, Blanca may have undergone an eyewall replacement cycle on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.\u00a0 When a rainband wraps around an existing eyewall, it produces dissipation of the original eyewall.\u00a0 The result is often a larger hurricane with a bigger eye, which is the appearance of Blanca on satellite imagery.\u00a0 The combination of cooler water and a possible eyewall replacement changed the structure of the hurricane from a small intense circulation to a weaker and larger circulation.\u00a0 However, Blanca is still a 100 m.p.h. (160 km\/h).\u00a0 Blanca is moving again and it will start to move away from the region of cooler water.\u00a0 The upper level winds are relatively light and the environment is favorable for some intensification during the next day or two.\u00a0 Since Blanca is larger and less well organized, it will respond more slowly to the favorable environment.\u00a0 As the hurricane nears latitude 20\u00b0N, it will start to encounter cooler water and weaken will be likely.<\/p>\n
A ridge to the northeast of Blanca and a trough west of Baja California are combining to steer it toward the north-northwest.\u00a0 That steering pattern is likely to continue for the next several days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Blanca would approach the southern portion of Baja California in about three days.\u00a0 A reconnaissance aircraft is scheduled to investigate the hurricane on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A combination of upwelling of cooler water and a possible eyewall replacement weakened Hurricane Blanca on Thursday.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Hurricane Blanca was located at latitude 13.7\u00b0N and longitude 105.7\u00b0W which put it about 690 (1115 km) miles south-southeast of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and about 380 (610 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\/908"}],"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=908"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":910,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions\/910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}