Amid very favorable conditions, Amanda then rapidly intensified late on May 23, eventually reaching its peak intensity on May 25 as a high-end Category 4 hurricane.

[1] Based on this data, the National Hurricane Center upgraded the disturbance to Tropical Depression One-E at 18:00 UTC that day while located about 550 miles (890 km) south-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico, although it was not operationally classified until three hours later.

[1][2] The depression gradually organized, with banding features developing near the center, and eventually was upgraded to a tropical storm on May 23, being assigned the name Amanda.

With very warm sea surface temperatures of near 30 °C (86 °F), a moist environment, and light wind shear, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center predicted that Amanda had the potential to rapidly intensify.

The rapid intensification eventually leveled off with Amanda reaching its peak intensity at 12:00 UTC that day as a high-end Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale.

[1] Because Amanda had been moving slowly over nearly the same areas as it had before, the hurricane began upwelling waters from below, with sea surface temperatures dropping by 6 °C underneath it.

[14] Later that day, it also became the strongest May tropical cyclone in the Eastern Pacific basin in the satellite era,[15] eclipsing the previous record set by Hurricane Adolph in 2001, which had peak winds of 145 mph (230 km/h).

[16] The 2014 15U Baseball World Cup had to be relocated from La Paz, Baja California Sur to Sinaloa due to damage caused by the storm.