Strong upper level winds blew away the upper potion of Tropical Cyclone Raquel on Wednesday.\u00a0 However, the upper level winds lessened on Thursday and thunderstorms began to reform on the western side of the circulation.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Cyclone Raquel was located at latitude 6.4\u00b0S and longitude 160.5\u00b0E which put it about 220 miles (360 km) north of Honiara in the Solomon Islands.\u00a0 Raquel was moving toward the south-southeast at 3 m.p.h. (5 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 40 m.p.h. (65 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 994 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Raquel is over water where the Sea Surface Temperatures are very warm.\u00a0 However, an upper level ridge east of Raquel generated strong winds over the top of the tropical cyclone on Wednesday and blew away the upper parts of the circulation.\u00a0 The upper level winds weakened on Thursday and new thunderstorms began to develop west of the center of circulation.\u00a0 Upper level divergence is also occurring in the western half of the circulation and Raquel looks like a tropical cyclone again.\u00a0 The upper level winds are still strong enough to inhibit intensification, but Raquel could strengthen further in the short term.<\/p>\n
When the top parts of the circulation were blown away on Wednesday, the lower level circulation was steered by winds in the lower troposphere and it moved toward the northeast.\u00a0 As the thunderstorms redevelop, the height of the circulation is increasing and Raquel is more likely to be steered by winds in the middle troposphere.\u00a0 Those winds are expected to steer Raquel back toward the southwest.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Raquel could again approach Santa Isabel Island on Friday.\u00a0 It could bring winds and locally heavy rain to portions of the Central Solomon Islands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Strong upper level winds blew away the upper potion of Tropical Cyclone Raquel on Wednesday.\u00a0 However, the upper level winds lessened on Thursday and thunderstorms began to reform on the western side of the circulation.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Cyclone Raquel was located at latitude 6.4\u00b0S and longitude 160.5\u00b0E […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,2],"tags":[78,124],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1075,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions\/1075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}