Jimena is now a Category 4 hurricane and threatening to wreak
havoc on Mexico’s resort-dotted Baja California peninsula.
By William Spain, McClatchy News Service
CHICAGO
Jimena is now a Category 4 hurricane and threatening to wreak havoc on Mexico’s resort-dotted Baja California peninsula.
The National Hurricane Center said Sunday that “conditions appear favorable for additional strengthening during the next 24-36 hours.”
Category 4 is the second-strongest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale used by hurricane forecasters.
The storm’s center was about 515 miles south-southeast of the southern tip of Baja California, the hurricane center reported.
The storm is moving northwest at about 9 miles per hour, although that speed is forecast to decrease in the next couple days.
It has maximum sustained winds of 135 miles per hour, with even higher gusts, the NHC said.
The Associated Press reported that economists from around the world are scheduled to attend a conference sponsored by the Paris-based Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development on Tuesday and Wednesday on the Baja peninsula.
It was not clear if the conference still will be held, AP said, reporting that the organization’s public relations office was closed Sunday.
Projections show Jimena coming ashore along the west coast of Baja California by early Wednesday.
Meanwhile in the Atlantic Ocean, Danny has been downgraded to a depression as it drenches the North Carolina coast with heavy rain. The remnants of the storm are moving toward the north-northeast at 30 to 35 miles per hour and while it is “no longer a tropical system, large swells from the extratropical low are expected to produce dangerous surf conditions and life-threatening rip currents along the U.S. East Coast during the next day or two,” according to the NHC.
The August hurricane season in the Atlantic still is expected to be below normal. There have been only four named storms and none has caused significant damage. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through October.
Citing the calming effect of the El Nino weather phenomenon, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now predicts a 70 percent chance of 7 to 11 named storms, of which six could become hurricanes and one or two could become major hurricanes.
El Nino, a warming of waters along the equatorial central and eastern Pacific, produces upper-atmosphere winds that tend to reduce the formation of storms in the tropical Atlantic.
