Hurricane Cosme Continues Moving Westward in the Pacific Ocean
Hawaii, (rushprnews) July 19th, 2007 – On Wed. July 18, Tropical Storm Cosme continued its westward trek in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and is expected to pass south of Hawaii over the weekend of July 21-22. At 15:00 UTC (5:00 a.m. Hawaiian Time) on Wed. July 18, the center of Cosme was located near 15.3 north and 138.9 west.
The storm was moving west at 12 knots (13 mph), and had maximum sustained winds of 35 knots (40 mph) with gusts to 45 knots (52 mph). Its minimum central pressure was 1004 millibars.
Hurricane Cosme was the third named storm in the 2007 Eastern Pacific hurricane season. Cosme formed in a common area for hurricanes to start off the Pacific coast of Mexico and it tracked north and west. Cosme built power from its initial Tropical Depression state on July 14 to a minimal Category 1 hurricane on July 16.
At 10:45 a.m. local time (19:45 UTC) on July 16, 2007, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image, Hurricane Cosme was at its brief peak as a Category 1 storm. The hurricane had a well-defined spiral shape, but it was relatively small and its central eye was filled with clouds (known as a closed eye). Sustained winds were measured at 120 kilometers per hour (75 miles per hour) according to the University of Hawaii’s Tropical Storm Information Center, at the time of this MODIS image.
Conditions for Hurricane Cosme to intensify were poor, and by July 17, it had downgraded back to tropical storm status. The storm was projected to continue on a mostly westward track toward Hawaii, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center on July 17, 2007.
By early Saturday morning, the National Hurricane Center’s current forecast projects that Cosme’s eye will be south of the big Island of Hawaii.
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