Tropical hurricane Polo Follows Odile track to Blast Baja California

Tropical typhoon Polo, the sixteenth hurricane of an surprisingly lively eastern Pacific hurricane season, is on a route eerily like that of Odile, which blasted the Baja California peninsula in advance this week.

Odile went ashore past due Sept. 14 with pinnacle winds of 125 miles (201 kilometers) per hour, the strongest typhoon to hit the location considering the fact that 1967. As its winds swept the lodge metropolis of Cabo San Lucas, it changed into a category three typhoon on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale and a first-rate typhoon.

At its peak, hours earlier than landfall, Odile’s winds reached 135 mph, class four-force. photos from Mexico’s Baja California Sur show houses destroyed, lodges piled with debris and gaping holes in the neighborhood airport. as a minimum 30,000 tourists had been stranded.

Now Polo has began its journey up the western coast of Mexico towards the peninsula, which juts out into the Pacific like a lightning rod.

The U.S. country wide hurricane center’s forecast music calls for Polo to skirt Mexico’s mainland through the week and then come to be to the west of Baja California over the weekend.

Tracks exchange

Tracks this a long way in advance generally tend to alternate, on occasion a lot, and the southern tip of Baja California is inside what forecasters name the “cone of uncertainty.” In different words, the typhoon should become anywhere from nicely offshore to following Odile’s specific route. Even the hurricane center warns in opposition to counting on lengthy-range predictions of where a storm will pass.

final week, Odile have been trending farther faraway from shore because the days went on. however, the hurricane ended up striking the tip of the peninsula almost head-on.

As Polo gets organized and movements throughout the warm waters of the Pacific, parents all alongside the coast of Mexico need to look at it carefully. even if Polo misses the peninsula, there is a good risk it'll drop heavy rain on areas hit through Odile and flooded by Norbert.

Norbert, like Odile, was a first-rate hurricane. It swept beyond Baja California earlier this month spreading rain throughout the location. in addition, a finger of moisture reached out from Norbert and flooded Arizona. Odile is forecast to pound the U.S. Southwest a few more.

The jap Pacific basin’s 30-yr average for the six- month tropical season is for 15 named storms, 8 of them hurricanes. There have been sixteen storms to date in 2014 and all but 5 of them have become hurricanes. The season has more than  months to head.