So shear is detrimental for hurricanes, and when you get a lot of shear it tends to really knock down the season. It disrupts the vortex, and you just can’t get the deep thunderstorms you need to support the storm. If you have shear - if you have winds in one direction blowing, say, out of the east, and winds in the other direction blowing out of the west - that will basically tilt the hurricane circulation. So the idea is that hurricanes want to be upright. Shear is basically the change in wind direction with height in the atmosphere. Not every year, but in general it’s more active than the Atlantic.Ī lot of it is just that the shear is lower. Climatologically the Atlantic has about 12 storms, and the northeast Pacific has 16, so they do get more. So unless they go and hit Hawaii, like Lane did, people just kind of ignore them and go, “Oh, it’s a nice pretty hurricane out in the middle of nowhere doing no impacts to anyone.” But it’s been a phenomenally active northeast Pacific season. There are actually more! This has been the most active northeast Pacific hurricane season on record, and no one pays attention to the storms because they generally go out to the middle of nowhere and die. We don’t hear about hurricanes in the Pacific as often as we hear about hurricanes in the Atlantic, is that because there are fewer? #Lane #Walaka /VIJdwckvaj- Philip Klotzbach October 22, 2018 #Willa is now a Category 5 #hurricane - the 3rd of the 2018 Northeast Pacific (to 180°) hurricane season to date. Which is why frankly, in research, it’s probably the most neglected hurricane basin. Most hurricanes in the northeast Pacific don’t really impact people. And then most of them go west and track north, get to cold water, and die. So storms in the northeast Pacific form in a nice tight little latitude-longitude area. In the Pacific, the water temperatures get cold as you go further north - which is why we don’t see hurricanes hitting California - and also the shear gets quite strong. Is there a pattern to hurricane formation in the Pacific, and does Hurricane Willa fit that pattern? But even if it’s a four or a three it’s certainly one of a stronger storms that have hit them. So for the western coast of Mexico, getting stuff in October into November isn’t that uncommon. They tend to move west and then go north and hook back into Mexico. In terms of its track, that’s pretty typical for late season storms in the east Pacific. “It’s unusual in that it intensified that quickly.” Not the fastest, but definitely up there in terms of intensifying quickly. The Hurricane Center has been watching this thing for a while, and it wasn’t really doing much - and then basically the bottom fell out of it and it went from a tropical depression to a Category 5 in like 48 hours, which is very impressive. The models were always really aggressive at developing this storm. It’s unusual in that it intensified that quickly. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. The Verge spoke with Klotzbach about hurricanes in the Pacific, Willa’s speedy intensification, and why this year is so odd. And taking storm frequency, duration, and intensity into account, this is the region’s most active hurricane season on record, he says So far, three Category 5 storms have formed in the northeast Pacific this year, probably due to a combination of favorable atmospheric conditions, and warm ocean waters. But in fact, the northeastern Pacific is actually more prone to hurricanes than the Atlantic, Klotzbach says. “It definitely looks like a pretty serious threat,” he says.Īfter back-to-back hurricanes pummeling the east coast of the US, a hurricane on the Pacific coast of North America may seem surprising. The storm is still set to be a major hurricane when it strikes land. “Unfortunately landfall is tomorrow, so it doesn’t have a ton of time to weaken,” says Phil Klotzbach, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University. While the storm’s expected to continue losing strength, the National Hurricane Center predicts it probably won’t lose a significant amount of steam before it hits Mexico. “It definitely looks like a pretty serious threat.”
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