Saturday, June 06, 2015

Hurricane Blanca Regains Category 4 Status


Hurricane Blanca has strengthened again as it moved northwestward during the night. The NHC has again (at 8:00 am MST this morning) categorized the storm as Category 4, with wind speeds of 130 mph. The storm is still forecast to make landfall somewhere along the Baja peninsula. 


Unless the storm were to enter into the southern GoC, it appears that its track will trigger the first Gulf Surge of the season and bring high values of PW into southern Arizona and California. The forecast above is from the 06 UTC run of the WRF-GFS at Atmo and is valid at 5:00 am on June 9th - note that the GFS and NAM versions of the WRF are considerably different for this impending event. For some unknown reason the NAM version stagnates Blanca southwest of Baja as it weakens and dissipates the storm - boundary problems? The new run of the NAM this morning forecasts the same stagnation.

The WRF-GFS forecast of accumulated precipitation through 11:00 am MST on Tuesday June 9th is shown below. Through that time the model keeps significant rainfall along and south of the Borderlands. Perhaps by tomorrow the possible impacts of this event will become more clear?


No comments:

Post a Comment