Typhoon Ragasa hammered the Babuyan Islands just north of Luzon on Sunday night.\u00a0 At 5:00 a.m. EDT on Mounday the center of Typhoon Ragasa was located at latitude 19.4\u00b0N and longitude 121.1\u00b0E which put the center about 50 miles (80 km) north of Claveria, Philippines.\u00a0 Ragasa was moving toward the west at 12 m.p.h. (19 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 160 m.p.h. (260 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 195 m.p.h. (315 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 916 mb.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Ragasa was the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale when it hit the Babuyan Islands just north of Luzon on Sunday night.\u00a0 The eye at the center of Ragasa’s circulation passed over Babuyan Island.\u00a0 Typhoon Ragasa brought potentially catastrophic winds and heavy rain to the island.\u00a0 Ragasa could also have caused a storm surge of up to 16 feet (5 meters) along the coast of the island.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Ragasa was still the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane on Monday morning.\u00a0 A circular eye with a diameter of 35 miles (55 km) was at the center of Ragasa\u2019s circulation.\u00a0 The eye was surrounded by a ring of thunderstorms and the strongest winds were occurring in that ring of storms.\u00a0 Bands of showers and thunderstorms were revolving around the center of Typhoon Ragasa.\u00a0 Storms near the center of Ragasa generated strong upper level divergence that pumped mass away in all directions from the typhoon.\u00a0 The removal of large quantities of mass in the upper levels was nearly equal to the inflow of mass in the lower levels of the atmosphere.\u00a0 The balance of inflow and outflow of mass caused the surface pressure to remain nearly constant.<\/p>\n
The circulation around Typhoon Ragasa was large.\u00a0 Winds to typhoon force extended out 80 miles (130 km) from the center of Ragasa\u2019s circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out 250 miles (400km) from the center of Typhoon Ragasa.<\/p>\n
The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) for Typhoon Ragasa was 35.0.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) was 28.4 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) was 63.4.\u00a0 Typhoon Ragasa was similar in intensity to Hurricane Maria when Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017.\u00a0 Ragasa was bigger than Maria was.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Ragasa will move through an environment very favorable for a powerful typhoon during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 Ragasa will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperatures are near 29\u00b0C.\u00a0 It will move through a region where the upper level winds are weak and there will be little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Typhoon Ragasa could maintain its intensity during the next 24 hours unless an eyewall replacement cycle occurs.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Ragasa will move around the southern side of a high pressure system over the Western North Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 The high pressure system will steer Ragasa toward the west during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 On its anticipated track, the center of Typhoon Ragasa will be south of Hong Kong in 48 hours.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Ragasa will continue to produce very strong winds and heavy rain in the Batanes Islands and to the Babuyan Island until it moves farther to the west of those islands. \u00a0 Typhoon Ragasa is likely to cause catastrophic damage on those islands.\u00a0 Typhoon Ragasa will also continue to cause strong winds and heavy rain in northern Luzon.\u00a0 Heavy rain could cause flash floods in some locations.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere over the Western North Pacific Ocean, Typhoon Neoguri weakened slightly far to the east of Japan.\u00a0 At 5:00 a.m. EDT on Monday the center of Typhoon Neoguri was located at latitude 30.3\u00b0N and longitude 152.0\u00b0E which put the center about 825 miles (1330 km) east of Tokyo, Japan.\u00a0 Neoguri was moving toward the northeast at 11 m.p.h. (17 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 950 mb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Typhoon Ragasa hammered the Babuyan Islands just north of Luzon on Sunday night.\u00a0 At 5:00 a.m. EDT on Mounday the center of Typhoon Ragasa was located at latitude 19.4\u00b0N and longitude 121.1\u00b0E which put the center about 50 miles (80 km) north of Claveria, Philippines.\u00a0 Ragasa was moving toward the west at 12 m.p.h. (19 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[239,242,3284,3285,2719,127,650,44,103,1750,64,3980,474,1763,3981,240,243],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23157"}],"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=23157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23158,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23157\/revisions\/23158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}