Tropical Storm Soudelor intensified on Saturday and it has almost reached typhoon status.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Tropical Storm Soudelor was located at latitude 14.8\u00b0N and longitude 147.7\u00b0E which put it about 170 miles (275 km) east-southeast of Saipan.\u00a0 Soudelor was moving toward the west-northwest at 18 m.p.h. (29 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 70 m.p.h. (115 km\/h) and there were gusts to 85 m.p.h. (135 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 978 mb.\u00a0 A Typhoon Warning has been issued for Saipan and Tinian.\u00a0 A Tropical Storm Warning has been issued for Rota.\u00a0 A Typhoon Watch has been issued for Agrihan, Pagan and Alamagan.<\/p>\n
The structure of Tropical Storm Soudelor improved on Saturday.\u00a0 A long spiral band wrapped almost entirely around the center of circulation and numerous other spiral bands were apparent on satellite imagery.\u00a0 There are more thunderstorms on the western side of the circulation.\u00a0 Soudelor is moving over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 An upper level ridge north of the tropical storm is causing light easterly winds over the circulation.\u00a0 However, the vertical wind shear is modest and upper level divergence is increasing.\u00a0 Soudelor is in a favorable environment.\u00a0 Further intensification is likely and rapid intensification is possible.\u00a0 Soudelor will very likely be a typhoon when it moves through Marianas.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge is steering Soudelor toward the west-northwest and that pattern is expected to continue during the next few days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Soudelor will be near Saipan and Tinian in about 12 hours.\u00a0 It could bring strong winds to those locations and other nearby islands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Storm Soudelor intensified on Saturday and it has almost reached typhoon status.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Tropical Storm Soudelor was located at latitude 14.8\u00b0N and longitude 147.7\u00b0E which put it about 170 miles (275 km) east-southeast of Saipan.\u00a0 Soudelor was moving toward the west-northwest at 18 m.p.h. (29 km\/h).\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[45,44,136,105,42,106],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228"}],"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=1228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1229,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions\/1229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}