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Cat 5 Major Hurricane Patricia


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New frame is in... tough to say. Looks like it's turned a bit right, but I don't think it's far enough yet to be making a beeline for EZ. As usual, you guys are on top of things discussing the possibility of moving back further north.

 

EDIT: On the other hand, the GOES West imagery makes it look like EZ is still perfect. Hooray for parallax.

 

It was EZ or back to San Mateo. There were no real options between the two. Decided to wait for a few frames and wait it out in EZ. Once he were to move towards San Mateo there would be no coming back.

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Yea, I do hope that my immediate family lives, but....sorry if I cluttered the thread expressing it.

Is there confirmation of the ERC?

Shortwave or is good for that and it clearly shows an erc. The inner eye does usually hang on for a long time after the new one starts forming.
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EASTERN PACIFIC - A Look at Patricia's Strongest Winds
Strongest sustained winds wrapped around Hurricane Patricia's eye (red) as seen in the International Space Station's Rapid Scat Instrument on October 22 at 11 p.m. EDT.
Right now, Patricia's maximum sustained winds remain near 200 mph (325 km/h) with higher gusts.Patricia is a category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Patricia's center was about 85 miles (135 km) southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. Full update to follow shortly. Latest forecasts from the National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
Credit: NASA/JPL, Doug Tyler

12122394_974084875971639_308194699837504
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So much for my expectation of weakening to a 140-155 kt. hurricane prior to landfall. I'm shocked that's it's been able to maintain such an unbelievable intensity for so long!

I've been tracking/forecasting TCs since before doing a student internship at the NHC in 1986 (and again in 1994), and I've never seen such a stable eye for a relatively comparable system!

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That second plane is Nasa's B57.  At 60k ft looks like they are studying the atmosphere above Patricia.  How often is that used in Hurricane research?  http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/b-57_feature.html

 

The WB-57 is equipped with a dropsonde system that can launch at a crazy fast rate, but it is not certain that they will try to go for the eye.  They might be trying to blanket the storm at a larger scale.

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The ERC simply won't have time to induce substantial weakening given the faster movement. I'd say a Haiyan-style landfall (160-165 kt, perhaps even a bit stronger) looks very likely now. This would put the storm in contention for the strongest landfall on record, rivaling or exceeding Haiyan and the 1935 Labor Day hurricane.

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The assertions in this article are still speculative.  You earlier saw with this storm how significantly ADT numbers can sometimes give poor estimations for observed winds.  In this case, the observed winds were higher than ADT estimates; however, there is certainly an error margin on ADT, and 'concluding' that unobserved storms that had ADT numbers a few decimal points higher simply isn't good science.

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CNN coverage gives the impression that the worst of the storm is heading for Puerto Vallarta. This does not appear to be likely to happen. The worst damage from this landfall will probably be from Punta Perula to La Manzanilla.

 

I was able to contact a resort just west of Punta Perula (too late for an evacuation anyway) and explained to them that they may or may not be in the high impact zone but just a few miles to their east, for sure there will be severe damage from wind and storm surge. I asked them if there was any chance they could contact key people in the small towns along the coast nearby to see if preparations were adequate and to stress the life or death situation developing. And I told them that I hoped they would be on the better side of the landfall, and what to expect either way. From their pictures, they look to have some fairly substantial structures just above the probable storm surge maximum, and I'm not sure if they have many guests in this off-season month. Anyway, all I can do at this point, perhaps they will interact with police or other key people in the towns between there and La Manzanilla before communications go down, and perhaps it will help, but having looked at the images on google earth for Punta Perula, you can see it is fairly wide open to wind and high storm surge (at least it is 8-10 metres above sea level which may help with the surge issues).

 

Anyway, if anyone is hugely concerned about Puerto Vallarta, I think they are just going to get the tropical storm or cat-1 winds on the backside, the main impact zone will of course be east of the track and along the track.

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