Simon Helps Push Eastern Pacific Hurricane Activity to Record

The eastern Pacific has set a record for hurricane activity as Hurricane Simon lashes Mexico’s west coast and another storm threatens to form.

The basin had produced 68.5 hurricane days as of Tuesday morning, surpassing the previous record of 68.25, according to Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University. The tally is poised to rise further as Simon persists and another system, likely to become Trudy, develops.

“We should add several more hurricane days this week with Simon and very soon to be Trudy,” Klotzbach said by email.

Simon, with winds of 90 miles (145 kilometers) per hour, was about 95 miles west of Cabo Corrientes, Mexico, and moving west-northwest, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an 8 a.m. New York time advisory. Mexico’s weather service issued yellow rain warnings from Sinaloa to Jalisco.

The eastern Pacific’s hyperactivity, which has also seen a rare number of near misses on Hawaii, is due to the still strengthening El Niño in the equatorial Pacific and an ongoing oceanic heat wave off Mexico and California that has fueled the storms. There have been 19 named storms in the eastern Pacific, as well as two others – Lala and Moke – that formed closer to Hawaii.

A typical season produces about 15 named storms by the time it ends Nov. 30, and the Hurricane Center said a 20th may form Tuesday. At least eight storms have become major hurricanes, with winds of 111 mph or more, compared with about four in a normal season.

Hurricane days are tabulated using six-hour increments, Klotzbach said. If multiple hurricanes are spinning in the basin, all of them will contribute to the total.

“So, one day can produce two hurricane days if we have two hurricanes at the same time for the full day,” he said.