Sunday, June 6, 2010

Hurricane Stan




Hurricane Stan originated from a tropical wave that was first identified by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) off the west coast of Africa on September 17, 2005. Traveling westward, the wave remained weak, barely being notable. By September 22, before convection began to increase; however, wind shear in the region prevented this development from lasting. The system entered the Caribbean Sea several days later, a region with more favorable conditions for cyclonic development. Intermittent convection formed around the wave as it moved west-northwestward before the development maintained itself.On October 1, the system had become sufficiently organized for the NHC to classify it as Tropical Depression Twenty, with the center of circulation situated roughly 135 mi (215 km) souhteast of Cozumel, Mexico

Located to the south of a low to mid-level tropospheric ridge, the depression tracked towards the west-northwest. Within a few hours of being warned upon, the system further intensified into Tropical Storm Stan. This followed the development of a strong convective banding feature to the southeast of the storm's center.[3] Around 1000 UTC (5 a.m. CDT) on October 2, Stan made its first landfall near Punta Hualaxtoc, Mexico, roughly 35 mi (55 km) south of Tulum, with winds of 40 mph (65 km/h). Over the following 18 hours, the weak storm traversed the southern portion of the Yucatán Peninsula. Upon entering the Gulf of Mexico on October 3, Stan had weakened to a tropical depression; however, convection began to redevelop over the storm's center, allowing the system to re-attain tropical storm status.

Was the eighteenth named tropical storm and eleventh hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It was also the sixth of seven tropical cyclones (three hurricanes, two of them major, three tropical storms and one tropical depression) to make landfall in Mexico. Stan was a relatively weak storm that only briefly reached hurricane status. It was embedded in a larger non-tropical system of rainstorms that dropped torrential rains in the Central American countries of Guatemala and El Salvador and in southern Mexico, causing flooding and mudslides that led to 1,638 fatalities. Throughout the affected countries, the storm left roughly $3.9 billion in damage.

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