After Becoming a Snowstorm, Lala Reinvigorates Itself to Become Category 4 Hurricane

After Becoming a Snowstorm, Lala Reinvigorates Itself to Become Category 4 Hurricane. The development was reported by cimss/ssec.

After Becoming a Snowstorm: Latest Details

Maneuvering into a warm sea and low-shear environment was beneficial for Lala’s development, and it rapidly intensified. From 0000 UTC on the 18th to 24 hours later, it strengthened from a strong tropical storm all the way to a weak Category 4 hurricane.

The time series of automated intensity estimates from the CIMSS D-MINT product tells the story well. As of 1400 UTC on the 19th, Lala is straddling the line between Category 3 and Category 4.

One of the mesoscale sector scans from GOES-18 has been trained on it, so it’s possible to see it evolve on a minute-by-minute scale. Here is an animation from around 1430 UTC of the Band 13 infrared window channel. It’s night at this time, so no shortwave products are available.

Still, this is an excellent way to assess just how intense this storm is. There’s a clear, well-defined eye that even has a hint of some mesovortices in the inside.