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ABSTRACT
The National Hurricane Center (a component of the Tropical Prediction Center) tracked nine tropical storms, five of which became hurricanes, during the 1996 eastern North Pacific hurricane season. Five tropical storms or hurricanes made landfall in Mexico. An overview of the 1996 hurricane season is presented.
1. Introduction
For the era of routine meteorological satellite coverage that began in 1966, the average numbers of tropical storms and hurricanes per year in the eastern North Pacific (from 140W eastward and from the equator northward) are 16 and 9, respectively. In 1996, the National Hurricane Center (NHC, a component of the Tropical Prediction Center) identified nine tropical storms, of which five became hurricanes. For the 196695 period, only 1969, 1970, and 1977 had fewer hurricanes (four), and only 1977 had fewer tropical storms (eight). Not only were fewer eastern North Pacific tropical storms and hurricanes than average tracked in 1996, there were, uncharacteristically, fewer than observed in the Atlantic basin. Also, the tracks of most of the cyclones, as in 1995, were short and clustered near the southwest coast of Mexico. Five tropical cyclones, Hurricanes Alma, Boris, Fausto, and Hernan, and Tropical Storm Cristina, made landfall on the coast of Mexico. Two hurricanes, Douglas and Fausto, reached category 3 or higher status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale (SSHS) (Simpson 1974) with estimated 1-min sustained winds of at least 50 m s-1. A summary of 1996 tropical storm and hurricane statistics is shown in Table 1.
Section 2 briefly describes the database available to the NHC. Section 3 evaluates 1996 NHC forecast quality. Section 4 describes the season's cyclones and section 5 recaps the highlights.
2. Best tracks
The NHC tropical cyclone "best-track" database consists of a center position and two measures of intensity (the maximum 1-min sustained surface wind speed and the minimum sea level pressure).' The parameters are estimated at 6-h intervals. They are based on a poststorm analysis of data conducted by the NHC. The primary sources for the analysis are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch (TAFB), the NOAA Synoptic Analysis Branch (SAB), and the Air Force Global Weather Center (AFGWC). These centers provided to the NHC real-time estimates of position and intensity by applying the...