Tropical Cyclone Winston brought wind and rain as it moved through Tonga on Monday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Monday the center of Tropical Cyclone Winston was located at latitude 18.9\u00b0S and longitude 175.0\u00b0W which put it about 405 miles (650 km) east-southeast of Suva, Fiji and about 140 miles (225 km) north of Nuku’ Alofa, Tonga.\u00a0 Winston was moving toward the east-northeast at 15 m.p.h. (24 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 990 mb.<\/p>\n
The structure of Tropical Cyclone Winston improved on Monday.\u00a0 A primary rainband wrapped much of the way around the eye and a nearly complete eyewall reformed.\u00a0 Additional bands of thunderstorms formed mainly in the eastern half of the circulation.\u00a0 Thunderstorms increased the upper level divergence to the northeast of Winston.<\/p>\n
The environment remains marginal for intensification.\u00a0 A subtropical ridge is generating southwesterly winds over the top of Tropical Cyclone Winston.\u00a0 Those winds are generating moderate vertical wind shear and are inhibiting re-intensification of Winston.\u00a0 However, the tropical cyclone is moving over water where the Sea Surface Temperatures are near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 If the upper level winds diminish, then Tropical Cyclone Winston could re-intensify during the next several days.<\/p>\n
The subtropical ridge is steering Winston toward the east-northeast and that general motion is expected to continue for another 24 to 48 hours.\u00a0 On it anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Winston will move through the Vava’u Group of Tonga.\u00a0 It could bring strong winds and locally heavy rain to those islands.\u00a0 Winston could be between Samoa and Niue later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Winston brought wind and rain as it moved through Tonga on Monday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Monday the center of Tropical Cyclone Winston was located at latitude 18.9\u00b0S and longitude 175.0\u00b0W which put it about 405 miles (650 km) east-southeast of Suva, Fiji and about 140 miles (225 km) north of Nuku’ […]<\/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":[341,89,306,301,338,307,340],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210"}],"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=2210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2211,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210\/revisions\/2211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}