![]() Otis’ intensification was among the fastest forecasters have seen its top-end windspeed increased by 115 mph in 24 hours and 90 mph in a 12-hour period. Wednesday - Otis makes landfall as a 165 mph, Category 5 hurricane. Hurricane Otis is seen late Tuesday just before landfall as a Category 5 storm. Here’s how quickly the storm escalated on Tuesday. “It’s always the worst- case scenario when you have a storm very close to landfall, when you’re having to make significant upward adjustments to the forecast and the reality of the scenario that people are going to face is very different from what they may initially plan for,” Brennan told CNN. The newly acquired aircraft data confirmed Otis had begun to rapidly intensify and the storm’s forecast changed dramatically. “By the time we had the Hurricane Hunter aircraft fly into the storm (Tuesday) afternoon, the data revealed that the storm was about 20 to 30 mph stronger than we would have estimated from just looking at satellite imagery,” Brennan told CNN.īrennan said the NHC typically deploys aircraft reconnaissance in the Eastern Pacific for “hurricane threats to land areas.” CNN has asked Brennen why the Hurricane Hunters were not sent into the storm earlier than Tuesday afternoon. Planes drop sensors into the storm to take real-time measurements as they fall through the cyclone, including wind speed and pressure. That’s where NOAA’s aircraft reconnaissance team, the Hurricane Hunters, come in. “We don’t always have the best, complete picture of what’s going on underneath the cloud canopy you see on satellite imagery,” Michael Brennan, director of the National Hurricane Center, told CNN. The forecasters at the National Hurricane Center were using satellites to estimate the intensity of Otis, a common practice for tropical systems – but there can be problems with this method. As Tuesday progressed, and the storm began to move over incredibly warm water near the coast, it became clear environmental conditions weren’t playing out as forecasters expected and Otis was not going to be held back. But it was a small storm, which made it much more prone to big changes in intensity. here's the intensity forecasts initialized 24 hours ago, with the dotted black line showing verification: /DN5pf7lcOS- Tomer Burg October 25, 2023ĭisruptive high-level winds were expected to keep a lid on Otis’ strength. Just to emphasize how poorly hurricane & global models performed for Hurricane Otis. Brennan said the satellite data and hurricane models were underplaying its current intensity and how strong it could potentially get. The forecast was on the “high side of pretty much all the intensity guidance” that forecasters get from computer models, Michael Brennan, director of the National Hurricane Center, told CNN.īut the storm was still severely underestimated. Otis was not forecast to become a hurricane until early Tuesday morning, a little more than 24 hours before it would make its unprecedented Category 5 landfall.Ī hurricane watch was issued Monday afternoon for Acapulco and surrounding parts of the coast. Evelyn Salgado Pineda announced Wednesday morning temporary shelters were open in Tecpan de Galeana, Coyuca de Benítez and Acapulco. On Tuesday night, the president implored coastal residents of the state of Guerrero, which includes Acapulco, to seek shelter and stay away from rivers, streams and ravines ahead of the storm’s landfall. Power was restored to 40% of those customers, the utility added. The storm knocked out power to more than 500,000 customers in Mexico’s Guerrero state, the power company CFE said in a statement. ![]() A man on Wednesday crosses a highway blocked by a landslide triggered by Hurricane Otis near Acapulco.
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