Hurricane Kenna

October 26, 2002

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Provided by: NASA/GSFC; NOAA
Summary authors & editors: Jim Foster

The NOAA-10 satellite image shown above was taken early yeasterday (Friday) morning and shows Hurricane Kenna slamming into western Mexico, not too far from Mazatlan. Fortunately, like Lili, Kenna lost a bit of its steam as it approached the coast. Kenna was briefly a powerful category 5 storm (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) on Thursday night, with winds greater than 155 mph (135 kt or 249 km/hr). However, the eye wall began to fill early Friday morning, and when landfall was made, Kenna was a category 4, with winds 131-155 mph (114-135 kt or 210-249 km/hr). Tropical storms that form in the western northern Pacific Ocean are referred to as hurricanes, but thier names are different from hurricanes that form in the Atlantic Ocean. This is why a hurricane beginning with the letter "K" formed after Hurricane Lili, which formed in the Atlantic.

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