Tropical Cyclone continued to intensify steadily on Saturday and it is now the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 8:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Tropical Cyclone Ula was located at latitude 19.8\u00b0S and longitude 171.4\u00b0E which put it about 400 miles (640 km) east-northeast of Noumea, New Caledonia.\u00a0 Ula was moving toward the southwest at 7 m.p.h. (11 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 140 m.p.h. (225 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 165 m.p.h. (270 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 933 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Ula has circular eye with a diameter of 24 miles (38 km).\u00a0 The eye is surrounded by a closed ring of thunderstorms.\u00a0 Other spiral bands are rotating around the center of circulation.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Ula is moving through an environment that is almost perfect for intensification.\u00a0 The upper level winds are very light and there is almost no vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Ula is over water where the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is near 28\u00b0C.\u00a0 It intensified quickly on Saturday and it has the potential to intensify a little more before it moves over cooler SSTs.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Ula is moving around the western end of a subtropical ridge which is steering it toward the southwest.\u00a0 That general motion is expected to continue for another 12 to 24 hours.\u00a0 As Ula reaches the western end of the ridge it will start moving more toward the south.\u00a0 Eventually the mid-latitude westerlies will start to steer Ula toward the southeast.<\/p>\n
On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Ula could pass near the extreme southeastern islands of Vanuatu.\u00a0 The greatest risk is to Aneityum and Futuna.\u00a0 Ula could also bring wind and rain to Tanna, Aniwa, and Erromango.\u00a0 The core with the strongest winds should pass southeast of Vanuatu, but Ula could bring wind and rain to some of those islands.\u00a0 The center of Ula is expected to pass east of New Caledonia early next week, but it could also bring wind and rain to the Iles Loyaute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone continued to intensify steadily on Saturday and it is now the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 8:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Tropical Cyclone Ula was located at latitude 19.8\u00b0S and longitude 171.4\u00b0E which put it about 400 miles (640 km) east-northeast of Noumea, New […]<\/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":[313,89,88,92,300,298,90],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101"}],"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=2101"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2104,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions\/2104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}