Vertical wind shear decreased enough on Thursday to allow more thunderstorms to develop near the center of Tropical Depression 14E and the National Hurricane Center upgraded it to Tropical Storm Kevin.\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Storm Kevin was located at latitude 17.9\u00b0N and longitude 115.6\u00b0W which put it about 505 miles (815 km) southwest of the southern tip of Baja California.\u00a0 Kevin was moving toward the north at 6 m.p.h. (9 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 60 m.p.h. (95 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 1000 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Storm Kevin is a small tropical cyclone.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force only extend out about 70 miles (115 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 There is one short spiral band wrapping around the northwest side of the center and another short band wrapping around the southwest side of the center.\u00a0 There are not many thunderstorms in the eastern half of the circulation.\u00a0 Kevin is over water where the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is near 29\u00b0C.\u00a0 However, a large, high amplitude upper level trough along the west coast of the U.S. is generating moderate southwesterly winds over the top of Kevin.\u00a0 The vertical wind shear inhibited the development of Kevin, but the shear seems to have lessened today and the circulation in the tropical storm has consolidated around the center.\u00a0 Thunderstorms near the center of Kevin are generating upper level divergence over a small area.<\/p>\n
As Kevin moves farther north it will move over cooler SSTs.\u00a0\u00a0 When it gets north of latitude 22\u00b0N, Kevin will move over SSTs cooler than 26\u00b0C.\u00a0 If the vertical wind shear remains moderate, Kevin could intensify further during the next 24 to 48 hours.\u00a0 After about two days, the tropical storm will move over cooler SSTs and into an area with more vertical wind shear.\u00a0 At that point Kevin is likely to start to spin down.<\/p>\n
A ridge over Mexico is steering Kevin toward the north and that general motion is expected to continue for another day or two.\u00a0 When Kevin moves over cooler SSTs, the thunderstorms will not be as tall and it will be steered by the winds lower in the atmosphere.\u00a0 Those winds could push Kevin more toward the west during the weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vertical wind shear decreased enough on Thursday to allow more thunderstorms to develop near the center of Tropical Depression 14E and the National Hurricane Center upgraded it to Tropical Storm Kevin.\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Storm Kevin was located at latitude 17.9\u00b0N and longitude 115.6\u00b0W which put it about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[159,39,158,24,41,157],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513"}],"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=1513"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1514,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513\/revisions\/1514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}