Hurricane Polo

Hurricane — Category 5 Polo is packing 155-kt (180-mph) winds, moving W at 9 kt (10 mph). Moves inland over the coast Tue as a weakening tropical storm.

At 200 PM MST (2100 UTC), the center of Hurricane Polo was located near latitude 17.2 North, longitude 109.2 West. Polo is moving toward the west near 10 mph (17 km/h). This motion is expected to continue this evening, followed by a gradual turn toward the northwest on Saturday and north on Sunday. By Monday, Polo is forecast to turn northeastward and approach Baja California Sur. Data from a NOAA Hurricane Hunter reconnaissance aircraft indicate that maximum sustained winds remain near 180 mph (285 km/h) with higher gusts. Polo is a category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Fluctuations in intensity are possible today, but slow weakening is expected by the weekend. Polo is expected to remain a powerful hurricane as it approaches Baja California Sur early next week. Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 35 miles (55 km) from the center and tropical-storm-force— National Hurricane Center · public advisory 21

This is the East Pacific · 15°N–36°N, 116°W–101°W. Polo’s forecast track is the dotted spine — the labelled dots mark its position each day. Every cell is shaded by how many hours it spends inside Polo’s gale-force (≥34 kt · 39 mph) wind across the whole forecast, the damaging core counted double.

Read it two ways at once. Colour is the total — the hours of gale-force wind a place piles up. A slow storm writes its danger in duration, not in any single gust, so the longer the wind sits over a place, the deeper its colour. Opacity is confidence — solid where the official probability of that wind is high, faint where it is only a chance. So a deep, solid cell is a place the wind will work for a long time and likely will; a pale, faint one is a brief, uncertain brush at the edge of the cone.