Hurricane Rachel

Hurricane — Category 2 Rachel is packing 85-kt (100-mph) winds, moving WNW at 5 kt (6 mph). Expected to stay over open water.

At 200 AM MST (0900 UTC), the center of Hurricane Rachel was located near latitude 19.4 North, longitude 109.3 West. Rachel is moving toward the west-northwest near 6 mph (9 km/h), and this motion is expected to continue during the next couple of days. On the forecast track, the center of Rachel will continue to move away from mainland Mexico and pass south of the Baja California Peninsula today. Maximum sustained winds are near 100 mph (155 km/h) with higher gusts. Rachel is expected to continue strengthening and become a major hurricane within the next couple of days. Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 35 miles (55 km) from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 150 miles (240 km). The estimated minimum central pressure is 972 mb (28.71 inches).— National Hurricane Center · public advisory 17

Rachel tracks over open water — no coast is in the outlook. Along its path, our forecast reads:

This is the East Pacific · 17°N–25°N, 123°W–107°W. Rachel’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 Rachel’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.