Author: Carolyn Gramling / Source: Science News
From Hawaii to Mexico, powerful storms have buffeted a wide swath of the Pacific Ocean in 2018.
Now, with Hurricane Willa bearing down on southwestern Mexico on October 23, the hurricane season across the central and eastern regions of the Pacific has become the most active on record — at least by one measure, known as accumulated cyclone energy.So far in 2018, there have been 22 named storms in the central and eastern Pacific regions, including 11 major hurricanes of category 3 or stronger. The latest in that string of storms, Willa rapidly strengthened from a tropical storm on October 20 into a category 5 hurricane two days later.
Hurricane #Willa, seen by #GOESEast, is now a “potentially catastrophic” Cat. 5 storm. Willa is expected to make landfall along the southwestern coast of Mexico Tuesday afternoon or evening. Take a look at Willa’s path on our Pacific hurricane tracker: https://t.co/9aoFdvDmTr pic.twitter.com/nu2ChERXRd
— NOAA Satellites (@NOAASatellites)
At 2 p.m. EDT on October 23, as the storm approached the coast, it weakened into a category 3 hurricane, with maximum winds churning at 195 kilometers per hour.
The eastern Pacific season has been “very…
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