Genevieve became 2026’s first Category 5 hurricane, then weakened

Hurricanes are among the most powerful forces in nature, but they can also be surprisingly unpredictable. One moment a storm is racing into a monster cyclone the next it starts to run out of steam. And that is exactly what happened with Hurricane Genevieve which became the first Category 5 hurricane of the 2026 Eastern Pacific hurricane season for a few hours before weakening just hours later. The storm never posed a direct threat to land, but its rapid strengthening and weakening has caught the eye of meteorologists who study how tropical cyclones develop over warm oceans. Here’s what fueled Genevieve’s rapid intensification and why it didn’t stay at Category 5 for long.Genevieve reaches Category 5 IntensityAccording to a report by AP News, Genevieve briefly strengthened into a Category 5 storm early Monday with maximum sustained winds of 160 mph (260 km/h), the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.