Amanda Becomes Strongest May Hurricane On Record May 30, 2014
Report by Earthweek
Hurricane Amanda can be seen reaching its maximum intensity on Sunday morning local time well to the south of Mexico's Baja California peninsula.
The first named storm to emerge in the Eastern Pacific hurricane season quickly became one for the record books.
Hurricane Amanda underwent explosive development after it formed well off the Mexican coast, soon reaching Category-4 force.
With maximum sustained winds of 155 mph on May 25, Amanda became the most powerful May Pacific storm on record.
That beat out Hurricane Adolph of 2001, which generated winds of 145 mph on May 29 of that year.
Amanda was predicted to spin out over open waters of the Pacific without threatening any land areas.
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Friday, 30 May, 2014, by Nick Prebble, MeteoGroup UK
Eastern Pacific Hurricanes Begin
A woman walks on a sidewalk next to a flooded street after torrential rains hit several neighbourhoods in Mexico City.
Photo: Bernardo Montoya/Reuters
This week saw the first named storm of the year as Hurricane
Amanda formed in the Eastern Pacific, attaining category 4 status for a time with peak winds of 250kph.
Amanda started last week as a cluster of heavy showers and thunderstorms approximately 1,046km southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico, and encountered favourable conditions for tropical cyclone development.
The basic ingredients of warm sea surface temperatures, weak atmospheric wind shear and a small component of Coriolis Force were met and by Saturday the system had reached hurricane 4...
NASA's CloudSat satellite flew over Hurricane Amanda on May 25, at 5 p.m. EDT and saw a deep area of moderate to heavy-moderate precipitation below the freezing level (where precipitation changes from frozen to liquid).
Waters in the tropical Eastern Pacific have been warming recently, increasing the odds of an El Niņo... 
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