Early Monday morning, forecasters said they anticipated slow strengthening, with Rina becoming a hurricane by Friday. But by 2 p.m. Monday, Rina had spun up with maximum sustained winds of 75 miles an hour - enough to reach hurricane status. Rina now is projected to become a major hurricane, with maximum sustained winds in excess of 110 miles an hour, within the next 48 hours.
The center of Rina currently is located some 207 miles east northeast of Trujillo, Honduras. Current track projections - with large uncertainties at the end of the five-day forecast period - have the center of the storm skirting the northern Yucatán Peninsula on Thursday and Friday before hooking eastward toward the western tip of Cuba.
Two key factors in Rina's spin-up: very warm sea-surface temperatures and a general wind environment that changes little in speed or direction with rising altitude. Such changes, dubbed wind shear, appear to have weakened since early Monday morning, according to forecast discussions. Strong shear tends to stifle hurricane development.
"Rita is in a very good environment" for strengthening, says Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
An animation of NOAA's GOES-13 satellite observations shows the development of Hurricane Rina from the low pressure area called System 96L (bottom, center) in the western Caribbean Sea. GOES-13 cloud images are overlaid on a true-color NASA/MODIS map. The observations date from October 22 at 8:45 a.m. EDT through Oct. 24 at 7:45 a.m. EDT; Rina formally became a Tropical Storm at 10 p.m. EDT on Oct. 23, and a hurricane later on Oct. 24.
Washington Post:
An approach to the Yucatan at low-end hurricane strength could bring lots of rain and gusty winds to places like Belize and Cancun. A substantial northward move thereafter toward the southern Gulf of Mexico appears, at this point, unlikely.
The official National Hurricane Center track for Rina over the next five days (National Hurricane Center) The models largely agree that Rina will not make it out of the Caribbean, and instead turn around and move back to the south beyond the 5-day forecast period. In the unlikely event it were to get pulled northward, the odds are that it would be coupled with a mid-latitude weather system strong enough to seriously damage its tropical characteristics.
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