Tropical Storm Champi is bringing gusty winds and heavy rain as it moves through the Northern Marianas.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Storm Champi was centered near latitude 15.9\u00b0N and longitude 146.3\u00b0E which put it about 80 miles (135 km) east-northeast of Saipan.\u00a0 Champi was moving toward the west at 19 m.p.h. (31 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 70 m.p.h. (115 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 85 m.p.h. (135 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 980 mb.\u00a0 A Tropical Storm Warning remains in effect for Rota, Tinian, Saipan, Alamagan, Pagan and Agrihan.\u00a0 The weather station at the airport on Saipan was reporting southwesterly winds at 46 m.p.h. (74 km\/h) with gusts to 78 m.p.h. (126 km\/h).<\/p>\n
Although an upper level ridge north of Champi continued to cause vertical wind shear over the tropical storm, it slowly intensified on Thursday.\u00a0 More thunderstorms formed near the center of circulation and those storms are generating more upper level divergence.\u00a0 The core of the circulation is consolidating and more spiral bands are forming outside the core.\u00a0 Champi is on the threshold of becoming a typhoon.\u00a0 It is moving over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 29\u00b0C.\u00a0 Champi is likely to move into an area where the upper level winds are lighter during the weekend and it will continue to intensify during the next several days.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge is steering Champi toward the west and that motion is expected to continue for the next 12 to 24 hours.\u00a0 After that time Champi will reach the western end of the ridge and turn toward the north.\u00a0 Champi could be a strong typhoon south of Iwo To in about three days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Storm Champi is bringing gusty winds and heavy rain as it moves through the Northern Marianas.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Storm Champi was centered near latitude 15.9\u00b0N and longitude 146.3\u00b0E which put it about 80 miles (135 km) east-northeast of Saipan.\u00a0 Champi was moving toward the west at […]<\/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":[242,107,44,181,105,241,243],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765"}],"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=1765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1766,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765\/revisions\/1766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}