{"id":66611,"date":"2025-09-03T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=66611"},"modified":"2025-09-07T05:09:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T05:09:03","slug":"hurricane-kiko-rapidly-intensifies-to-a-category-4-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/66611","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Kiko rapidly intensifies to a Category 4 storm in the East Pacific Ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>

1-minute GOES-18 Visible and Infrared images with plots of 1-minute GOES-18 GLM Flash Points, from 1733 UTC on 03 September to 0200 UTC on 04 September [click to play MP4 animation]<\/p><\/div>1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West)<\/em> Visible and Infrared images (above)<\/strong><\/em> showed the westward motion of of Hurricane Kiko<\/strong><\/a> during an 8.5-hour period as the tropical cyclone was rapidly intensifying (SATCON<\/strong><\/a>) from a Category 2 storm at 1500 UTC<\/strong><\/a> on 03 September 2025 to a Category 3 storm at 1800 UTC and then to a Category 4 storm at 2100 UTC<\/strong><\/a>. Visible imagery revealed low-altitude mesoscale vortices that were occasionally evident within the eye. Plots of 1-minute GOES-18 GLM<\/strong><\/a> Flash Points displayed intermittent lightning activity within the eyewall — and the coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures within the eyewall were in the -80\u00baC to -85\u00baC range.<\/p>\n

Kiko was moving through an environment characterized by low values of deep-layer wind shear<\/strong><\/a> (below)<\/strong><\/em>, and moving over relatively warm water<\/strong><\/a> — two factors that were favorable for tropical cyclone intensification.<\/p>\n

GOES-18 Infrared images with an overlay of contours and streamlines of Deep-Layer Wind Shear at 2200 UTC on 03 September<\/p><\/div>\n

An AMSU-B Microwave image at 1815 UTC (below)<\/strong><\/em> displayed a closed eyewall around the time that Kiko reached Category 4 intensity.<\/p>\n

AMSU-B Microwave (183 GHz) image at 1815 UTC<\/p><\/div>\n

A RCM-2 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image (source<\/strong><\/a>) at 0301 UTC on 04 September (below)<\/strong><\/em> depicted a maximum wind speed of 118.35 kts<\/strong><\/a> within the eyewall of Kiko.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

RCM-2 SAR wind speed image at 0301 UTC on 04 September [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>1-minute CIMSS True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid<\/strong><\/a> (below)<\/strong><\/em> showed a larger-scale view of Kiko.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

1-minute GOES-18 CIMSS True Color RGB images, from 1800 UTC on 03 September to 0259 UTC on 04 September (courtesy Mat Gunshor, CIMSS) [click to play animated GIF | MP4<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/div>MIMIC Total Precipitable Water<\/strong><\/a> images (below)<\/em><\/strong> indicated that Kiko (centered around 13\u00baN and moving between 130\u00baW and 140\u00baW) was beginning to tap moisture from the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ).<\/p>\n

Hourly MIMIC Total Precipitable Water images, from 0000 UTC on 03 September to 2300 UTC on 04 September<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) Visible and Infrared images (above) showed the westward motion of of Hurricane Kiko during an 8.5-hour period as the tropical cyclone was rapidly intensifying (SATCON) from a Category 2 storm at 1500 UTC on 03 September 2025 to a Category 3 storm at 1800 UTC and then to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":66612,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,76,114,30,79,45,104,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geo2grid","category-glm","category-goes-18","category-lightning","category-microwave","category-redgreenblue-rgb-images","category-sar","category-tropical-cyclones"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66611"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66689,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66611\/revisions\/66689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}