Tropical Cyclone Winston intensified into the equivalent of a Major Hurricane on Wednesday before it made a slow turn back toward Tonga and Fiji.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday the center of Tropical Cyclone Winston was located at latitude 17.1\u00b0N and longitude 171.2\u00b0W which put it about 160 miles (255 km) north-northwest of Niue and about 240 miles (390 km) east-northeast of Neiafu, Tonga.\u00a0 Winston was moving toward the west at 3 m.p.h. (5 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 120 m.p.h. (195 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 150 m.p.h. (240 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 944 mb.<\/p>\n
A very favorable environment of Sea Surface Temperatures near 30\u00b0C and little vertical wind shear allowed Tropical Cyclone Winston to intensify quickly into the equivalent of a Major Hurricane on Wednesday.\u00a0 Winston is a small, symmetrical tropical cyclone.\u00a0 There is a small, well formed eye at its center.\u00a0 The eye is surrounding by a ring of strong thunderstorms and there are several spiral bands rotating outside the eyewall.\u00a0 Hurricane force winds extend out about 40 miles (65 km) from the center and tropical storm force winds extend out about 140 miles (225 km) from the center.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Winston could remain in a favorable environment for another 12 to 24 hours.\u00a0 It has the potential to intensify further during that time.\u00a0 After that time vertical wind shear could start to increase.\u00a0 Since the circulation of Winston is relatively small, fluctuations in intensity could occur more quickly.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge south of Winston turned the tropical cyclone back toward the west on Wednesday.\u00a0 The ridge is expected to steer Winston slowly westward on Thursday.\u00a0 The subtropical ridge will steer it toward the west-southwest at a faster speed on Friday.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Winston could approach the northern islands of Tonga in about 36 hours.\u00a0 It could be a very strong tropical cyclone at that time and Winston could bring strong winds and heavy rain to those islands.\u00a0 Winston could be approaching Fiji in about three days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Winston intensified into the equivalent of a Major Hurricane on Wednesday before it made a slow turn back toward Tonga and Fiji.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday the center of Tropical Cyclone Winston was located at latitude 17.1\u00b0N and longitude 171.2\u00b0W which put it about 160 miles (255 km) north-northwest of Niue […]<\/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\/2223"}],"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=2223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2224,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223\/revisions\/2224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}