Hurricane Otis smashed into Mexico and broke records. Why did no one see it coming?

Early Wednesday morning, Hurricane Otis became the strongest storm in recorded history to strike the Pacific coast of Mexico. The Category 5 hurricane made landfall near Acapulco, where its heavy rain and 265-kilometer-per-hour (kph) winds unleashed massive landslides and knocked out power lines, killing at least 2 dozen people and causing widespread devastation. But just 2 days earlier, meteorologists doubted whether Otis—then a tropical storm—would even achieve hurricane status. Forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Center expected the storm to undergo “ gradual strengthening ,” with most computer models predicting maximum wind speeds of about 100 kph. Instead, as Otis careened toward Mexico’s coastline, its winds increased by 180 kph in 24 hours, a record amount of “rapid intensification.” For meteorologists, it was a tragic reminder that although forecasting methods have drastically improved in recent years, predicting when a minor storm will suddenly explode into a catastrophic hurricane is another matter. “It’s difficult to forecast something like that,” says John Kaplan, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Scientists do know the major ingredients driving rapid intensification. Two keys are a warm ocean and moist air, which combine to fuel the convection forces at the storm’s center. Sharanya Majumdar, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, notes that oce...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news