Tropical Cyclone Winston intensified rapidly on Tuesday as it moved east of Tonga.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Tuesday the center of Tropical Cyclone Winston was located at latitude 17.5\u00b0N and longitude 171.5\u00b0W which put it about 165 miles (270 km) northwest of Niue.\u00a0 Winston was moving toward the east at 7 m.p.h. (11 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 956 mb.<\/p>\n
The upper level winds that were blowing over the top of Tropical Cyclone Winston diminished on Tuesday.\u00a0 The decrease in vertical wind shear allowed Winston to intensify rapidly and it is now the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Winston remains in a favorable environment.\u00a0 It is over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 Winston has a well formed eye surrounded by an eyewall containing strong thunderstorms.\u00a0 Multiple spiral bands are rotating around the core of the circulation.\u00a0 Winston should continue to intensify and it could intensify rapidly on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge to the northeast of Winston is slowing the eastward motion of the tropical cyclone.\u00a0 Winston could continue to move a little farther east on Wednesday before the ridge blocks its motion.\u00a0 The ridge is forecast to strengthen and extend to the west later this week.\u00a0 As the ridge extends westward it will force Winston to start to move back toward the southwest.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Winston could move between Niue and Samoa on Wednesday.\u00a0 Winston could approach Tonga from the northeast as a much stronger tropical cyclone on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Winston intensified rapidly on Tuesday as it moved east of Tonga.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Tuesday the center of Tropical Cyclone Winston was located at latitude 17.5\u00b0N and longitude 171.5\u00b0W which put it about 165 miles (270 km) northwest of Niue.\u00a0 Winston was moving toward the east at 7 m.p.h. (11 km\/h).\u00a0 […]<\/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\/2217"}],"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=2217"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2219,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217\/revisions\/2219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}