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| Hurricane Bud looking impressive in this satellite photo from Monday |
And it could even wet some of the deserts of the American Southwest. Here are some details:
HURRICANE BUD
It's got an interesting name - Hurricane Bud - and it might sideswipe Cabo San Lucas later this week. By then, Bud's winds will have diminished to nothing too spectacular at all, but it could easily create a lot of heavy rain and flooding in southwestern Mexico, including the Baja Peninsula.
As of this morning, maximum sustained winds were 130 mph with Hurricane Bud, but it's moving northwest into cooler waters, which will start that weakening trend.
However, heavy rains often linger with the remains of hurricanes long after they weaken. Bud wil be no exception. It will probably still be a tropical storm when it reaches Baja California, and then soak western Mexico with up to 10 inches of rain. Flash flooding is a very good bet in that neck of the woods.
It looks as if moisture from Bud will make it all the way up into Arizona and Mexico. On one hand, this is good. The Southwest has been plagued by wildfires pretty much the entire spring, and some nice rains will help. This system might give Tucson and Phoenix their first rains in three months.
On the other hand, it doesn't take much rain in the deserts to set off flash flooding, and some of the downpours associated with the remains of Hurricane Bud at the end of the week could cause some local high water in Arizona and New Mexico.
GULF OF MEXICO STIRRING
Hurricane experts are watching an area of disturbed weather in the Caribbean Sea east of Central America that is likely to eventually drift north. Once it hits the Gulf of Mexico, there is a chance - albeit rather slight at this point - that it could become a tropical storm.
Even if it doesn't, this storminess will bring a slug of heavy rain somewhere into the Gulf Coast toward the weekend or early next week. At this point the target area for the potential heavy rain seems to be Texas and/or Louisiana, but we'll have to wait and see on that.
While nobody is hitting the panic button over potential flooding yet, this kind of thing makes people in and around Houston nervous, given the catastrophe of last year's Hurricane Harvey flooding there.
HURRICANES GETTING WETTER?
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| Flooding from Hurricane Harvey in Port Arthur, Texas last year. Photo by Marcus Yam/LA Times/Getty Images |
New research into hurricanes are leading to worries about heavier rains and worsening floods from future tropical systems.
The journal Nature reports on findings that hurricanes in general are traveling at a forward speed of 10 percent slower than 70 years ago.
That's bad because the longer a hurricane stays over an area, battering from wind and waves will also last longer. Worse, the heavy rains will go on in any one place for a greater period of time, resulting in worse floods than if the hurricane raced past a particular locations.
Some hurricanes have always slowed down and stalled. Again, witness Harvey in Texas last year. However, it looks like these stalls and decelerations with hurricanes are happening more often.
Once again, we can blame climate change. As NPR reports:
"Climate change is causing the poles to become warmer, which in turn affects the atmospheric pressure. There is less and less difference in pressure between the poles and the tropics, and that causes the big currents of wind between the two areas to slow down.
Storms ride on those currents of wind, like a boat in a stream."
Which means if the winds carrying tropical systems slow down, so will the hurricanes. Just another reason to dread hurricane season, huh?
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