Accuweather

Oct 27, 2011 5:13 AM

Hurricane Rina Nearing Yucatan Peninsula

Hurricane Rina is a Category 1 Hurricane located at 18.9° N, 87.0° W with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph, gusting to 90 mph

Rina remains a relatively small and weakening hurricane, but still poses dangers to the Yucatan Peninsula where it will slam onshore later today.

Hurricane Rina will make landfall along northeast Yucatan coast near Cozumel later today then it will head north along the coast tonight into tomorrow morning, then slowly shift away to the northeast and east later Friday into Saturday. There will be damaging winds and flooding rains along the northeast Yucatan coast today and tonight then they should taper off later Friday. A storm surge of 2-4 feet will occur near and just north of the landfall. The latest satellite pictures show a significant disorganized area of clouds around Rina. This has caused the winds to drop to 65 knots and it will probably continue weaken to a tropical storm by midday or early afternoon. Strong west-southwest winds aloft will weaken Rina even more over the weekend as the low-level center heads toward western Cuba and the midlevel feature heads across South Florida with heavy rain.

We have been monitoring an area of convection moving across the central Caribbean. Once this feature reaches the western or southwest Caribbean, conditions may become more favorable for development.

One other tropical wave over the open Atlantic along 44 west, south of 20 north, is causing some showers and thunderstorms, but upper-level winds in this area are hostile to further development. It is very slowly crawling westward. Should this wave end up in the Caribbean Sea in several days, conditions could be more favorable there.