Hurricane Patricia is now one of the strongest recorded storms on the planet and is likely to make landfall as a Category 5 storm in Mexico on Friday evening. It’s a record-breaking meteorological marvel but could quickly turn into a major humanitarian crisis when it makes landfall. We’re two journalists and a meteorologist who work at WXshift, a Climate Central powered weather website that provides climate context for your daily forecast. We’re here to answer your questions about the records Patricia is setting, potential impacts and anything else you want to know about this storm or why this year has seen a record number of strong tropical cyclones in the northern hemisphere. Ask us anything! We are: Sean Sublette is an award-winning meteorologist at Climate Central and WXshift. He previously worked as the chief meteorologist at WSET in Lynchburg, Va. and currently hosts WXshift’s Shift Ahead Andrea Thompson is a senior science writer at Climate Central and WXshift who focuses on extreme weather and climate change. Brian Kahn is a senior science writer at Climate Central and WXshift. His recent coverage has included Patricia as well as the recent northern hemisphere hurricane record. EDIT: Thank you all for your really thoughtful questions. We’ll be continuing our coverage on the site as well as [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/wxshift] so please follow along. And if you know anyone in the region, please tell them to be safe and seek shelter. This storm is serious.

Hi everyone, I’m the chief meteorologist for WXshift and Climate Central. I also run our National Science Foundation-funded program with that provides climate information to more than 250 on-air TV meteorologists. In previous lives, I was a meteorologist for Accuweather and on TV in Baltimore. I’m a proud Penn State alum (We are…!) and card-carrying weather geek. I’m part of a team that just launched WXshift, a new weather site, this week. It offers something no other weather site has — relevant, localized trends in rainfall, snowfall, temperatures and drought in the context of your daily forecast. We couldn’t be more excited about it and I would love to answer your questions about the site, how we crunched data from 2,000 weather stations, local (or global) climate change, weather or any other burning meteorology questions you have. I’ve brought along a few friends to join, too. Brian Kahn, a senior science writer here at Climate Central, Eric Holthaus, a writer at Slate and fellow meteorologist, and Deke Arndt, the head of climate monitoring at the National Centers for Environmental Information, are here to chat, too. We’ll be back at 2 pm ET (11 am PT, 6 pm UTC) to answer questions, ask us anything! EDIT: Hey Reddit, Bernadette and Brian here! It’s 2 p.m. ET, and we’re officially jumping in to answer your questions along with Deke and Eric. Look forward to chatting! EDIT #2: Hello everyone! Just wanted to send out a HUGE thank you to all of your for participating and for all of your questions. We are really sorry that we can’t answer each and every one of them, but we tried to cover as much as we could today before signing out. Also, a BIG thanks to the other members of this AMA Deke and Eric. Until next time… Bernadette and Brian