5 Meteorologists Illustrate the ‘Nightmare Scenario’ of Hurricane Otis
It came out of nowhere.

Monsters don’t only sneak up on you in horror movies. In the dark of Monday night, a storm system brewing in the Eastern Pacific still looked as if it would make landfall near Acapulco, Mexico, as nothing greater than a tropical storm. But within just 12 hours on Tuesday, Tropical Storm Otis intensified by 80 mph into a full-blown hurricane; when it made landfall just after midnight on Wednesday morning, it had exploded into an unprecedented Category 5 storm. Eric Blake, a forecaster with the National Hurricane Center, called the event nothing short of a “nightmare scenario.”
Hurricane Otis is not the first storm to sneak up on forecasters this year, and if new hurricane research I recently covered is any indication, it won’t be the last, either. Hurricanes are more than twice as likely to intensify from a Category 1 storm into a Category 3 or greater in a single day than they were between 1970 and 1990, Andra Garner, an assistant professor at Rowan University, found when she looked at historic patterns in the Atlantic. “When storms intensify quickly, they can become more difficult to forecast and to plan for in terms of emergency action plans for coastal residents,” she told me via email last week, adding presciently, “I think these findings should really serve as an urgent warning for us.”
Here’s how five meteorologists have illustrated the unprecedented danger of Hurricane Otis:
Hurricane models didn’t even show this as an option.
Just to emphasize how poorly hurricane & global models performed for Hurricane Otis... here's the intensity forecasts initialized 24 hours ago, with the dotted black line showing verification: pic.twitter.com/DN5pf7lcOS
— Tomer Burg (@burgwx) October 25, 2023
And here’s another fun fact from meteorologist Tomer Burg about hurricanes named Otis doing surprising things.
Otis was likely powered by warm ocean waters.
Not too many storms are this unpredictable. Each colored line represents an intensity forecast from the NHC, made every six hours. The thick black line is the observed intensity. None of the models saw this coming either. pic.twitter.com/ljwxPYnEbV
— Brian McNoldy (@BMcNoldy) October 25, 2023
#Otis took full advantage of a warm patch of ocean last night... passing over 31°C water on its approach to #Acapulco. The extremely rapid intensification from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane took place over this tiny area. pic.twitter.com/f6fpYD1DOk
— Brian McNoldy (@BMcNoldy) October 25, 2023
“Imagine starting your day expecting a stiff breeze and some rain, and overnight you get catastrophic 165 mph winds,” Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School, also tweeted.
Acapulco doesn’t have experience with storms this strong.
This is not just a rare & dangerous event for October, but anytime of year in #Acapulco, which has not been directly impacted by a major hurricane like #Otis in the EPAC best-track record (back to 1949).
The last hurricane to affect the area directly was a 75 kt TC in 1951. pic.twitter.com/kBh1QoosGB
— Philippe Papin (@pppapin) October 25, 2023
The last hurricane to hit the Acapulco area directly was a significantly weaker tropical cyclone in 1951. Philippe Papin, with the National Hurricane Center, further explains on Twitter why Hurricane Otis is distinct from Hurricane Pauline in 1997, a Category 4 storm that killed hundreds near Alculpoco due to regional flooding and rainfall, but which actually made landfall further southeast.
Otis strengthened by 80 mph in just a 12-hour window, a record for the region.
#Hurricane #Otis has intensified by 80 mph in the past 12 hours (from 65 mph to 145 mph). That's the fastest 12 hr intensification rate in the eastern North Pacific (to 180°) in the satellite era (since 1966), breaking the old record of 75 mph/12 hr set by Patricia in 2015. pic.twitter.com/O5BrIrUi5X
— Philip Klotzbach (@philklotzbach) October 25, 2023
Colorado State University researcher Philip Klotzbach emphasized why it’s so hard to prepare for a storm like Otis — because with that sort of speed, you just can’t see it coming.
This is what that level of intensification looks like in motion.
Wow...seeing #HurricaneOtis rapidly strengthen from a Tropical Storm yesterday at noon to a Category 5 Hurricane at midnight is astounding...almost mind boggling. #Acapulco #Hurricane pic.twitter.com/9jgOu1F8Bg
— Meteorologist Zach Maloch (@ZachMalochWX) October 25, 2023
Mind-boggling, indeed.