A well defined center of circulation developed within an area of thunderstorms on Friday and the system was designated Tropical Storm Melor (28W).\u00a0 At 4:00 p.m. EST on Friday the center of Tropical Storm Melor was located at latitude 10.4\u00b0N and longitude 134.9\u00b0E which put it about 210 miles (335 km) north-northeast of Koror, Palau.\u00a0 Melor was moving toward the west-northwest at 17 m.p.h. (27 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 65 m.p.h. (105 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 997 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Storm Melor organized quickly on Friday.\u00a0 A rainband wrapped about three quarters of the way around the center of circulation and an eyewall may be forming.\u00a0 Outer rainbands are also rotating around the center of circulation.\u00a0 Thunderstorms around the center of circulation are producing upper level divergence.<\/p>\n
The environment around Tropical Storm Melor is favorable for further intensification.\u00a0 It is over water where the Sea Surface Temperatures are warm.\u00a0 An upper level ridge is producing light southerly winds over the top of Melor, but there is only modest vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Once a fully developed eye forms at the center of Melor, the tropical storm could intensify rapidly.\u00a0 Melor could become a typhoon on Saturday and it could become the equivalent of a major hurricane in 48 to 73 hours.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge north of Melor is steering the tropical storm toward the west-northwest and that general motion is expected to continue during the next two or three days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track, Melor could reach the Central Philippines within 72 hours.\u00a0 It could be a strong typhoon at that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A well defined center of circulation developed within an area of thunderstorms on Friday and the system was designated Tropical Storm Melor (28W).\u00a0 At 4:00 p.m. EST on Friday the center of Tropical Storm Melor was located at latitude 10.4\u00b0N and longitude 134.9\u00b0E which put it about 210 miles (335 km) north-northeast of Koror, Palau.\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":[293,95,64,292,294,66],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014"}],"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=2014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2015,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014\/revisions\/2015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}