Tropical Storm Niala organized quickly southeast of Hawaii on Friday and the Central Pacific Hurricane Center issued a Tropical Storm Watch for Hawaii County.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday the center of Tropical Storm Niala was located at latitude 15.7\u00b0N and longitude 150.4\u00b0W which put it about 415 miles (665 km) southeast of Hilo, Hawaii.\u00a0 Niala was moving toward the northwest at 7 m.p.h. (11km\/h). \u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 45 m.p.h. (70 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 60 m.p.h. (95 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 1001 mb.<\/p>\n
The circulation inside Niala consolidated quickly around the core of the tropical storm on Friday.\u00a0 A primary rainband wrapped around the eastern and northern side of the circulation creating a small eyelike feature at the center of circulation.\u00a0 At least three additional rainbands formed in the eastern half of the tropical storm.\u00a0 There are fewer thunderstorms in the western half of the circulation which could indicated the presence of drier, more stable air in that part of Niala.<\/p>\n
Niala is over water where the Sea Surface Temperatures are nearly 29\u00b0C.\u00a0 The upper level winds are not too strong and the thunderstorms around the core of the circulation are generating upper level divergence,\u00a0 Niala could strenthen during the next day or so.\u00a0 A large upper level trough extends from northeast of Hawaii to the islands.\u00a0 As Niala moves toward the northwest, it will start to move under strong southwesterly winds on the eastern side of the trough.\u00a0 Those winds will create strong vertical wind shear and Niala will weaken as it approaches Hawaii.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge is steering Niala toward the northwest and that general motion is expected to continue for another 24 hours.\u00a0 When the wind shear weakens Niala, the circulation will not extend as high into the atmosphere.\u00a0 After that time the winds lower in the atmosphere will steer the weakening Niala toward the west.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Storm Niala organized quickly southeast of Hawaii on Friday and the Central Pacific Hurricane Center issued a Tropical Storm Watch for Hawaii County.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday the center of Tropical Storm Niala was located at latitude 15.7\u00b0N and longitude 150.4\u00b0W which put it about 415 miles (665 km) southeast of Hilo, […]<\/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":[196,197,23,195],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633"}],"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=1633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1634,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633\/revisions\/1634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}