Weather Wise: Why did Patricia intensify so rapidly?

Meteorological history was made Friday as Hurricane Patricia registered the highest official maximum wind speeds ever in a hurricane and one of the five lowest barometric pressures recorded.

With maximum sustained winds that reached 200 mph at one point Friday afternoon, and a barometric pressure of 879 millibars, the storm was certainly one for the record books.

If judging strictly by wind, according to Jeff Masters with Weather Underground, it’s tied for the third-strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded, as 1961’s Super Typhoon Nancy reached 215 mph and Super Typhoon Violet in the same year recorded 205 mph. Super Typhoon Ida also packed 200 maximum sustained winds at its peak and, unlike the other two storms, had a lower barometric pressure at its peak of 877 millibars.

Patricia’s rapid intensification was truly unfathomable. Masters adds that the pressure of the storm dropped from 980 mb to 880 mb in a day, which also made it the fastest-intensifying hurricane ever in the Western Hemisphere. Indeed, its maximum wind speed increased by 100 mph.

With the storm having been forecast to be a major hurricane at landfall previously, the intensity spike caused some sudden alarm undoubtedly through Mexico and the rest of the world, with fears that a catastrophe would unfold.

There was some good fortune involved that helped to mitigate the impacts caused by Patricia. As of this writing, there were miraculously no reports of any deaths from the storm in Mexico, though there have been reports of structures damaged by the storm.

First, Patricia hit an area where the coastline wasn’t heavily populated in the Jalisco state of Mexico. One of the few towns near where the center made landfall was Perula, for instance, with a population of 530 per en-nuestro-mexico.com. Micco has a population of around 9,000 as of 2010 according to city-data.com.

Officially, it was recorded as a Category 5 storm when it made landfall with maximum sustained winds of 165 mph, but its satellite presentation perhaps suggests it could have been weaker than that with its eye and overall presentation looking ragged as it hit the coast.

Why did this happen? Masters notes that the hurricane was undergoing an eyewall replacement cycle, where the inner eyewall is replaced by an outer eyewall that diminishes the maximum sustained winds but spreads out the highest winds over a greater area. Interaction with land also potentially played a factor.

The storm also weakened rapidly as it hit mountainous terrain of Mexico.

Patricia’s impacts were felt in the U.S. as its remnants caused a host of flood watches and warnings to be issued in Texas and Louisiana. Brevard will not see any impacts from Patricia’s remnants, according to the National Weather Service in Melbourne.

Bonanno graduated Florida Tech with a bachelor’s degree in environmental science with meteorology option. Contact Bonanno at 321-242-3662, cbonanno@floridatoday.com or follow Chris on Twitter @FTChrisBonanno.

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