Category 3 Odile the Strongest Hurricane on Record to Hit Baja
Destructive Hurricane Odile powered ashore at Cabo San Lucas on Mexico's Baja Peninsula near 12:45 am EDT Monday as a Category 3 storm with 125 mph winds. Odile was the strongest hurricane on record to hit the Baja Peninsula, tied with Hurricane Olivia of 1967. An Air Force hurricane hunter plane was in Odile Sunday afternoon, and measured a surface pressure of 922 mb. This pressure puts Odile in pretty select company--only two other Eastern Pacific hurricanes have had lower pressures measured in them by the Hurricane Hunters (though a total of eleven Eastern Pacific hurricanes have had lower pressures, if we include satellite-estimated pressures.) The only major hurricane on record to affect Southern Baja was Hurricane Kiko of 1989, which moved ashore on the Gulf of California side of the peninsula just south of La Paz as a Category 3 storm with 120 mph winds
Odile's circulation is bringing up plenty of moisture from the Tropical Pacific and from Tropical Depression Sixteen to its southwest, and this moisture will create flooding rains over Northern Mexico and the Southwest U.S. beginning on Tuesday. The 06Z Monday run of the GFDL model put Central Arizona in the highest risk area for heavy precipitation from Odile's moisture.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2799
Read the comments - lots of people including tourists stranded
= new reply since forum marked as read
One poor guy was standing in his house, walls up, roof gone, sunshine pouring in, a "what do I do now? look on his face, poor guy. I'd hazard a guess he's far from alone.
Buildings that survived have no glass left and stores were trashed.
Feeder bands are up as far as southern NM and humidity is already coming in to northern NM.
all weekend long, the "weather channel" ran "shows" about other hurricanes, even though they had a really dangerous one that was actually happening right then..
Friends of ours got caught in one a few years back.. in Baja .. they were totally on their own for 4 days..
..no decent water to drink (once their bottled water ran out)..the husband ended up losing a shoe in their trek to higher ground.. They were scared to death..
I guess if a hurricane hits Mexico, Jim Cantore cannot be bothered