The 1981 season

Tropical Storm Lidia (1981)

Tropical Storm Lidia peaked at 45 kt in the Eastern Pacific between October 6, 1981 and October 8, 1981, and made landfall.

Radar

Reflectivity now over Tropical Storm Lidia. Open it to see storms, cones and warnings on the map.

Open the live radar with storms, cones and warnings

Radar mosaic and map layers from NOAA MRMS. Boundaries from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet.

The storm

Basin
Eastern Pacific
Dates
October 6, 1981 to October 8, 1981
Peak strength
Tropical Storm, 45 kt (52 mph)
Landfall
Yes
Accumulated cyclone energy
0.9
Fastest the center moved
13 kt (15 mph)
Identifier
EP121981

Deaths and damage

No source this site reads publishes a machine-readable casualty or damage figure for a storm of this era. The National Hurricane Center’s season tables begin in 1995 and carry deaths and damage only from 2005 in the Atlantic and 2020 in both basins; the US Storm Events record begins in 1996.

Track

Time (UTC)PositionWindPressureStatus
Oct 6, 18:0019.5N 110.0W30 ktTropical depression
Oct 7, 00:0020.4N 109.5W45 ktTropical storm
Oct 7, 06:0021.5N 109.5W45 ktTropical storm
Oct 7, 12:0022.6N 109.5W40 ktTropical storm
Oct 7, 18:0023.7N 109.5W35 ktTropical storm
Oct 8, 00:0025.0N 109.5W35 ktTropical storm
Oct 8, 06:0026.0N 109.0W35 ktTropical storm

Other Eastern Pacific storms of 1981

What this means

A best track is the record a warning agency settles on after the storm, not what it said at the time: position, maximum sustained wind and central pressure every six hours, revised against every observation that came in later. Category is the Saffir-Simpson scale, which runs from Category 1 at 64 kt to Category 5 at 137 kt and reads wind only, so it says nothing about surge or rain. Accumulated cyclone energy adds up the square of the wind through the storm's life, so it counts strength and duration together.

Sources

Storm history from NOAA NCEI’s International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS), which merges the official best track of every warning agency. Live storms, cones, watches and warnings from the National Hurricane Center and the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. Archived radar from NOAA’s Level II archive.

The National Hurricane Center has published no tropical cyclone report for this storm.