Weather Tidbits -- Dennis McTighe

Next week the Eastern Pacific hurricane season begins, and it will run

until Nov. 15.

Down in the Mexican and Central American tropics, the rainiest months

are just getting underway, while our rainy season is pretty much over.

Clusters of thunderstorms are beginning to show up down there, off the

coast from El Salvador up to Puerto Escondido, the breeding grounds for

tropical storms and hurricanes. If conditions are right, these clusters

can grow even larger, developing a circular motion (counterclockwise) and

now we have a newly formed tropical depression (winds of 35 mph or less).

If all the factors are in place, the spinner intensifies, graduating

to a tropical storm (36 to 74 mph) and is given a name. It then begins to

trek slowly to the west-northwest, away from the southern Mexico mainland

coastline.

Moving out to a position of say 300 miles west of Acapulco, the feisty

pin-wheeler hits a large pocket of 88-degree water and quickly swells

into a category five monster, sustained winds in excess of 155 mph. The

huge wind machine, now 600 miles south of the tip of Baja, veers toward

the northwest and enters Southern California’s surf window.

Three days later, it’s 20 feet at the Wedge, 15th Street in Newport

looks like Pipeline and Brooks Street is lighting up with second and

third reef takeoffs all the way past the Oak Street stairs. This was the

life of Hurricane Guillermo in the summer of 1997.

During a normal season, there could be 14 named storms, most

production would be August and September, usually three or fourreaching

category three.

In a very busy year, during a major El Nino episode like in ‘72, ’83

and ‘97, we’ll run out of letters in the alphabet and red flag days are

frequent. We haven’t had a real red flag day since September 15, 1997 --

Hurricane “Linda.”

Running out of room, gotta run.

Stay tuned.

* DENNIS MCTIGHE writes “Weather Tidbits” for the Coastline Pilot.