What was Tropical Storm Rina just this morning is now Hurricane Rina this afternoon. Reports this afternoon from a Hurricane Hunter aircraft found that Rina was rapidly intensifying. Hurricane models are already forecasting her to be a category-2 hurricane by tomorrow and a category-3 by tomorrow night.
Hurricane Rina is currently about 200 miles southwest of Grand Cayman. Her maximum sustained winds have just increased to 75 miles per hour, and she continues to track northwest at 5 miles per hour. Some models show her traveling through western Cuba and towards the Florida coast.
To some, it seems a little late in the year to be getting hurricanes, but actually, the Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1st to November 30th.
NOAA shows in this graph that the number of hurricanes and tropical storms per 100 years' peak runs from mid August to late October. From 2001 to 2010, 17 hurricanes have been recorded in October.
And just as climatology shows, Hurricane Rina has originated right in the area she should, the Caribbean Sea.
~Meteorologist Heather Brinkmann
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