Hurricane Patricia: Strongest Hurricane On Record
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Category 5 Hurricane Patricia in the eastern Pacific is now the strongest hurricane on record.
In a mere 36 hours, Patricia went from a minimal tropical storm with winds of 40 mph to a catastrophic
Category 5 hurricane--an astounding rate of intensification.
As of the 1p advisory from the National Hurricane Center, Patricia's maximum sustained surface winds reached an incredible 200 mph, the highest (reliably-measured hurricane hunter aircraft) winds of any tropical cyclone in history, equivalent to a top-end EF-4 tornado!
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/floaters/20E/imagery/avn_lalo-animated.gif
(Satellite imagery of Hurricane Patricia. Credit: NOAA)
And while classifying hurricane strength indeed entails wind speed, it is the central minimum pressure of the system that ultimately categorizes its intensity.
Today, Patricia's central pressure dropped to 879 mb thus dethroning Hurricane Wilma from the top spot in hurricane history. Wilma, an Atlantic Basin storm in October of 2005, registered a central pressure of 882 mb and sustained winds of 185 mph at peak intensity. Hurricane Wilma made a U.S. landfall in southwest Florida, south of Naples, as a Category 3 and remains the fourth costliest Atlantic hurricane on record.
Hurricane Patricia is one for the history books on a global scale at the fourth strongest tropical cyclone on record—as all hurricanes are tropical cyclones, but not all tropical cyclones are hurricanes. Confused yet? The phenomena that are tropical cyclones form all over the world. In the Atlantic and eastern Pacific, a tropical cyclone is referred to as a 'hurricane', in the western Pacific, the term 'typhoon' is used and in the Indian Ocean and Australian region, the vernacular is simply 'cyclone'.
The strongest tropical cyclone on record, Super Typhoon Tip, formed in the western Pacific. Of storms within the top five lowest pressure measurements, only two formed outside of the western Pacific region; Hurricane Wilma, the only Atlantic system to make the list, and now Patricia, the first to claim top-ranking territory for the eastern Pacific.
TOP 5 STRONGEST TROPICAL CYCLONES ON RECORD:
Contributing factors in Patricia's rapid intensification include; near-record warm sea-surface temperatures near 87°, depth of the warm water to which upwelling (churning up of cooler water at lower depths) is minimized, very light wind shear and abundant atmospheric moisture.
Hurricane Patricia is forecast to maintain its extremely dangerous Category 5 status at landfall later this evening on southwestern Mexican coast near the resort city of Puerto Vallarta.
