Strong Tropical Cyclone Winston passed over northern Tonga as it moved closer to Fiji on Thursday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Thursday the center of Tropical Cyclone Winston was located at latitude 17.6\u00b0N and longitude 175.1\u00b0W which puts it about 460 miles (740 km) east of Suva, Fiji.\u00a0 Winston was moving toward the west at 14 m.p.h. (23 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 125 m.p.h. (205 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 155 m.p.h. (250 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 941 mb.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Winston is the equivalent of a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale and it would be considered a major hurricane if it were over the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n
Winston is a small, compact tropical cyclone with a well organized inner core.\u00a0 It has an eye with a diameter of 15-20 miles (24-32 km) which is surrounded by a ring of strong thunderstorms.\u00a0 A couple of bands of convection spiral into the core, but Tropical Cyclone Winston possesses some of the characteristics of an annular hurricane.<\/p>\n
Winston continues to move through a very favorable environment.\u00a0 The Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C and upper level winds are relatively light.\u00a0 There is not much vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Winston could intensify further on Friday.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge to the south of Winston is steering the tropical cyclone toward the west-southwest.\u00a0 That general motion is expected to continue for another day or two.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Winston could be very near the Lau Group of islands in eastern Fiji within 24 hours.\u00a0 Winston is expected to move across the Koro Sea and it could be near Suva within 48 hours.<\/p>\n
Winston is a strong tropical cyclone and it could bring destructive winds and heavy rain to parts of eastern Fiji.\u00a0 It could also bring a storm surge and large waves, which may create dangerous conditions in low lying coastal areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Strong Tropical Cyclone Winston passed over northern Tonga as it moved closer to Fiji on Thursday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Thursday the center of Tropical Cyclone Winston was located at latitude 17.6\u00b0N and longitude 175.1\u00b0W which puts it about 460 miles (740 km) east of Suva, Fiji.\u00a0 Winston was moving toward the west at […]<\/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\/2229"}],"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=2229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2230,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229\/revisions\/2230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}