Hurricane Odile is moving northwestward in the eastern Pacific with maximum sustained winds at this post of 130mph. It drastically strengthened late Saturday and early Sunday to become another major player along the Mexican west coast. Now it appears to be heading straight for Cabo San Lucas. This storm is a monster with high winds, very heavy rain, and an estimated storm surge to top 15 feet.
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The current forecast track has the hurricane running up the coast of the California Peninsula, coming within 50 miles of the coast as it treks quickly northward. This would be a pretty devastating scenario for much of the southern Peninsula because the right front quadrant of any hurricane is the most destructive. For those that have never been to that part of the world, Cabo is a resort town that sits on the far southern tip of the landmass. There is little hope of the storm missing the city; however the current forecast track is both good and puzzling.
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The track is good because the more landmass the storm crosses, the weaker it will become. But I'm troubled by the overall track. Because of the rules of friction (the more objects that interact with winds, the weaker they become) the storm isn't likely to hover along the coast for that long. As the storm moves northwest with one side of it over land and the other over water, the winds on the eastern side begin to fade while the winds on the western side continue to blow uninterrupted. This can often upset the balance in the hurricane, and force it to change direction toward and onto shore. This would obviously play a huge role in where this storm ends up

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That being said, there is little doubt that the moisture leftover from this beast will end up in the Desert Southwest. Very heavy rain fell a little over a week ago from Tucson and Phoenix Arizona into Nevada, and then was pulled up into the plains of Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri. Tremendous rainfall rates overwhelmed many areas and caused pretty widespread flash flooding. Well a similar scenario could happen again this week.

Below are two maps that show precipitable water. This is an index that measures the amount of moisture in a column of the atmosphere. This is the best way to show and compare the level of water in one air mass to another. Here is what the United States looks like Sunday morning...
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Much dryer air populates the north half of the country with browns and light greens indicating limited moisture. Far more water in the southern U.S. with some blues and yellows. Pay particular attention to the desert southwest in the bottom left of the picture. Now look at Wednesday morning...
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See the difference?? Tropical moisture moves into the Southwest U.S. with yellows, oranges, and reds indicating downpours of 3 to 5 inches an hour could fall across the region. So will Minnesota stay away from this? Well that's a good question that can't be answered at the moment. Mid and upper level winds will be pushing the moisture into the central U.S. which then could interact with the next storm system that could move through our area around next weekend. But we will have to revisit the situation as the weekend gets closer to find out exactly where the remnants of this storm end up.