Rewriting the Tropical Record Books

event unfolded off the west coast of Mexico. At first, the event seemed like a typical east Pacific tropical cyclone (TC), with operational forecasts of it becoming a minimal hurricane at best. What actual ly transpired would rewrite the record books for TCs. Hurricane Patricia became a historic storm, breaking several records, including those related to rate of intensity change and peak intensity [Table 1,1 derived from Kimberlain et al. (2015)]. These records, some of which have been recognized by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), are valid for either the entire globe or the Atlantic and east Pacific basins specifically. Based primarily on the analyses of the National Hurricane Center (NHC), the WMO’s Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes, a compendium of internationally accepted extremes (https://wmo.asu .edu/), now lists Hurricane Patricia as “most intense (by central pressure) tropical cyclone (Western Hemisphere)” with an estimated mean sea level pressure of 872 hPa as occurring on 23 October 2015. This value is second only to the 870-hPa value for Typhoon Tip on 12 October 1979. Additionally, the value of 185 kt (~95 m s–1) as an estimate of peak maximum sustained near-surface winds is accepted as “most intense (by maximum sustained surface winds) tropical cyclone (Western Hemisphere)” and ties the record for the globe with Typhoon Nancy’s (1961) estimated winds. East Pacific Hurricane Patricia (2015) broke several records, including