Destructive Tropical Cyclone Winston hit parts of Fiji on Friday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Friday the center of Tropical Cyclone Winston was located at latitude 17.1\u00b0N and longitude 179.6\u00b0E which put it about 125 miles (205 km) east-northeast of Suva, Fiji.\u00a0 The eye was just south of Vanua Levi.\u00a0 Winston was moving toward the west at 12 m.p.h. (19 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 185 m.p.h. (295 km\/h) which made Winston the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 There were wind gusts to 225 m.p.h. (360 km\/h) and the minimum surface pressure was 903 mb.<\/p>\n
Winston is a compact symmetrical tropical cyclone.\u00a0 It has a very well formed eye with a ring of very strong thunderstorms surrounding the eye.\u00a0 Several spiral bands curl into the eyewall.\u00a0 Thunderstorms around the eye are generating strong upper level divergence which pumped out mass and allowed the pressure to decrease rapidly during the past few hours.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Winston is in a nearly perfect environment for a tropical cyclone.\u00a0 It is over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 The upper level winds are light and there is almost no vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Winston could continue to intensify for another 6 to 12 hours.\u00a0 It is hard for a tropical cyclone to remain as strong as Winston is for an extended period of time.\u00a0 An eyewall replacement cycle, or movement over one of the large islands of Fiji could disrupt the circulation and cause Winston to weaken.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge south of Winston is steering the tropical cyclone to the west and that general motion is expected to continue for the next day or two.\u00a0 On its anticipated track the center of Tropical Cyclone Winston could pass very near the south coast of Vanua Levu and the north coast of Viti Levu.<\/p>\n
Winston is an extremely dangerous tropical cyclone.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index for Tropical Cyclone Winston is 44.1.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index is 12.9 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index is 57.0.\u00a0 These indices mean the Tropical Cyclone Winston is capable of producing regional catastrophic damage.\u00a0 In addition to wind damage heavy rain will cause inland flooding and storm surges will inundate low lying portions of the coast.\u00a0 The eye of Winston passed over Vanua Balavu and Yacata earlier on Friday and it is currently just south of Vanua Levi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Destructive Tropical Cyclone Winston hit parts of Fiji on Friday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Friday the center of Tropical Cyclone Winston was located at latitude 17.1\u00b0N and longitude 179.6\u00b0E which put it about 125 miles (205 km) east-northeast of Suva, Fiji.\u00a0 The eye was just south of Vanua Levi.\u00a0 Winston was moving toward the […]<\/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":[341,89,88,338,307,340,90],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2234"}],"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=2234"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2238,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2234\/revisions\/2238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}