A well organized center of circulation developed within a small area of thunderstorms south of Diego Garcia on Monday and the system was designated Tropical Cyclone Fantala.\u00a0 At 8:00 p.m. EDT on Monday the center of Tropical Cyclone Fantala was located at latitude 13.0\u00b0S and longitude 70.8\u00b0E which put it about 420 miles (675 km) south-southwest of Diego Garcia.\u00a0 Fantala was moving toward the west at 9 m.p.h. (14 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 65 m.p.h. (105 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 989 mb.<\/p>\n
The circulation of Tropical Cyclone is still organizing.\u00a0 A primary rainband is wrapping around the southern and western sides of the center of circulation.\u00a0 Most of the thunderstorms are near or in the primary rainband.\u00a0 There are few thunderstorms east of the center of circulation.\u00a0 The thunderstorms are generating upper level outflow to the west side of the circulation.<\/p>\n
The environment is favorable for further intensification.\u00a0 Fantala is over water where the Sea Surface Temperatures are near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 An upper level ridge south of Fantala is generating light easterly winds over the core of the circulation.\u00a0 The easterly winds are producing a little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 The shear is strong enough to contribute to the asymmetrical distribution of thunderstorms, but it is not strong enough to prevent intensification.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Fantala could become the equivalent of a hurricane\/typhoon within 24 hours.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge south of Fantala is expected to steer the tropical cyclone in a general westerly direction during the next few days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Fantala could be northeast of La Reunion later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A well organized center of circulation developed within a small area of thunderstorms south of Diego Garcia on Monday and the system was designated Tropical Cyclone Fantala.\u00a0 At 8:00 p.m. EDT on Monday the center of Tropical Cyclone Fantala was located at latitude 13.0\u00b0S and longitude 70.8\u00b0E which put it about 420 miles (675 km) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,2],"tags":[350,352,84,85,74,351,349],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323"}],"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=2323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2324,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323\/revisions\/2324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}