Tropical Cyclone Ula intensified quickly Wednesday into the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 4:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday the center of Tropical Cyclone Ula was located at latitude 16.3\u00b0N and longitude 170.4\u00b0W which put it about 135 miles (220 km\/h) south-southeast of Pago Pago, Samoa.\u00a0 Ula was moving toward the southwest at 5 m.p.h. (8 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 105 m.p.h. (170 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 125 m.p.h. (205 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 961 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Ula has a small, well organized inner core.\u00a0 An eye has appeared intermittently on satellite imagery.\u00a0 Thunderstorms near the core are generating upper level divergence which is pumping out mass and allowing the surface pressure to decrease.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Ula is moving through an environment favorable for intensification.\u00a0 It is over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 28.5\u00b0C.\u00a0 The upper level winds are not very strong and there is not much vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Ula could intensify a little more during the next 24 hours.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge is steering Tropical Cyclone Ula toward the southwest and a general west-southwesterly motion is expected to continue during the next several days.\u00a0 Ula is centered between Samoa, Niue and Tonga.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Ula will approach Tonga in about 24 hours.\u00a0 It could be approaching Fiji in about three days.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Ula is capable of bringing strong winds, high surf and heavy rain to the islands in its path.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Ula intensified quickly Wednesday into the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 4:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday the center of Tropical Cyclone Ula was located at latitude 16.3\u00b0N and longitude 170.4\u00b0W which put it about 135 miles (220 km\/h) south-southeast of Pago Pago, Samoa.\u00a0 Ula was moving toward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,2],"tags":[299,89,306,301,300,307,298],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059"}],"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=2059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2060,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059\/revisions\/2060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}