Wrapping up the 2014 Baja Hurricane Season

<p>The Eastern Pacific Hurricane Season runs through the end of November, but statistically now we are well past mid-October, the end of the Baja Hurricane Season. Only a handful of tropical cyclones form in the month of November in the whole of the Eastern Pacific, and they sometimes head toward Baja, but the air becomes too cool and dry to sustain them, long before reaching the peninsula. This year was a doozie for Baja California Sur and the Eastern Pacific. A relative unit of seasonal measure is the Accumulated Cyclonic Energy scale or ACE. ACE is not a perfect measurement, as it is calculated by the number of hours a storm is at a given intensity. It does not take into account the great variance in the size of the storms. We had some really large storms this season too. The 2014 Eastern Pacific Cyclone Season will go down in history for a number of factors, the first and perhaps the least significant to Baja is that it had the 10th highest ACE score since 1970, the last 44 years. This is because we had a record nine Major Hurricanes, those hurricanes of Category 3 or greater. The normal number of Major Hurricanes for the Eastern Pacific is 3.2. The season started out hot &amp; heavy right out of the gate in May and June, with the earliest Major Hurricane, Amanda, and another Major right behind it, Christina, both Category 4. It provided a record high ACE by the 10th of June. In all fairness we have to discount three of those Major Hurricanes, because they were born in the Eastern Pacific and became Major storms in the Central Pacific basin. Julio, Isselle and Genevieve all posed greater threats to Hawaii than anywhere in Mexico. Genevieve was one of the longest lived tropical cyclones in both distance and time, existing from July 25 to August 11 and becoming a Category 5 Hurricane close to Midway Island, out in the Central Pacific. But perhaps the two most significant statistics to us here in Baja came with Hurricane Odile. Odile slammed into the resort destination of Los Cabos on September 14 and plowed its way north up the spine of Baja through September 17. Major Hurricane Odile came ashore as a Category 3 Hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 100kts/115mph, making it a mid-scale, Category 3 Major Hurricane. Odile then strengthed over land and updated numbers now how Odile as a Category 4 over land, southwest of La Paz. Odile was the most powerful tropical cyclone to make landfall in Baja California Sur, and the only Category 4 hurricane, ever. Only one other Major Hurricane has ever made landfall in Baja, and that was Kiko in 1989 on East Cape, and virtually no one lived there way back then. North of La Paz the system began to dissipate quickly from Category 2 to 1 and somewhere around Loreto Odile was reduced to a tropical storm. Odile demonstrated to me just how 'small' our Eastern Pacific cyclones are. Although Odile covered a large area, providing rain and some nasty weather to the mainland coast about 300 miles to the east, while pounding Cabo San Lucas with its full intensity. The most severe damage occurs amazingly close to the storm center. There is no doubt the Cabo took the hit from Odile the worst, with the forward northeast edge plowing right through the resort region. The surf from the open Pacific battered everything along the coast and resorts facing the ocean took it on the nose. The storm center was about 30 miles west of La Paz with an eye diameter of 15nm. This put the most ferocious part of the deteriorating storm over La Paz, the northeast quadrant. Nearly everything in town was blown down from the east. Here at the northern most end of the Ensenada de La Paz we registered barometer readings crediting us with enduring just into the Category 1 scale. Another 12 miles further to the east at the beach in Tecolote the palapa was hardly ruffled. We also had to sweat out Hurricane Norbert, another Major Hurricane that brushed past the peninsula the first week of September. Norbert brought us a little rain, but could have done a whole lot more with just a slight shift to the east. Even the last hurrah, Hurricane Simon, became a Category 4 Hurricane in the over temperature Pacific water west of Magdalena Bay. Our flurry of September and October threats was a result of an alignment of the perfect worst conditions for Baja. Tropical cyclones, with their counter clockwise rotation, naturally want to spin off more to the west, like a rolling tire. But as the Northern Hemisphere begins to cool a northeast flow develops and since that crosses back across the peninsula, it turns ate season storms more to the northwest and even north. The other factors also conspired against us this season. A string of high energy tropical waves usually comes off the deserts of Western Africa and roll west across the Atlantic to our basin. These are often referred to as the 'seeds' of our tropical cyclones and the fall onslaught of them isn't abnormal. Additionally energy flows east across the Pacific, from the Indian Ocean, in the form of what is known as the Madden Julian oscillation, a convection wave that moves more humidity into the atmosphere. This phenomenon peaked the first week of October and was in part responsible for Odile. With the Monsoonal Flow pressed tight against the southern coast of Mexico, over +30°C waters, with stimulated convection from both the east and the west our season spelled Doom for Baja California Sur in the worst part of the season to align. The late season storms were not the only beneficiaries, the waters of the Pacific coast of Baja and in fact as far north as the Aleutian Islands were and still are well over normal temperatures. Some of the very large areas, as large as the continental US were as much as 8°F over normal, when 6°F is considered catastrophic. It meant our tropical cyclones, like Simon, went much further north than normal and the continued strange and violent weather over the western US is likely to continue. The areas of over-temperature waters dwarf the impact of El Nino and will continue to do so to much of the western US and Canada well into the winter months. El Nino was the final conspirator against Baja this fall. The event had been forecast to become an El Nino, or warmer than normal situation since early spring, it only warmed up a little, just short of being called an El Nino. In neutral years Baja is more than guaranteed at least one tropical cyclone landfall, 114% of the time. Now forecasts call for an El Nino to begin by Spring 2015, but forecasters are less sure in their prognostications as they wait. Non-event years, like this one past, present the highest probability of Baja landfalls. I don't have super computers to run weather models 6 and 12 months into the future. But I have been studying Eastern Pacific Hurricane for 14 seasons now. When I make my season forecast I look heavily at statistics from previous years. I consider the Sea Surface Temperature trend and the pending state of the El Nino. Then I throw in some gut feeling and a wild card or two. Here is the prediction I posted back in June for 2014 and I must say, I unfortunately sound pretty prophetic… June 2014"My statistical prediction is that we will see a busy season with several close calls. We'll get two named systems to make Baja landfall this season and get the B'jesus scared out of us at the tip of the peninsula, and the close passage of a third system, also a Major Hurricane. (only two Major Hurricanes have ever made landfall in Baja (1982 and 1989 on East Cape) But what do I know…" In the weather forecasting gig 60% correct or better makes you a weather god. But I'll take my 'dead on' forecast humbly this year, in part because it wasn't all good news and because in looking at the trends and coming up with the right conclusions is one of my wildcards in the mix, there certainly still remains a fair amount of luck in the call for me. Now, you never say never with Mother Nature, the waters surrounding Baja California Sur will remain warm enough through the next few weeks to support the rogue storm our distance north. But with each passing clear day, getting cooler and drier the likelihood drops to near zero. I may come back and refresh this at the official end of the season. Looking FAR into the future, well beyond any realistic forecasting, the trends in motion indicate another wild and wooly season in 2015. But we'll start talking Tropical Cyclones again here next year, when the Eastern Pacific Cyclone Season resumes again, May 15. Tomas</p>