Tropical Cyclone Fantala grew in size and intensity on Wednesday.\u00a0 At 8:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday the center of Tropical Cyclone Fantala was located at latitude 12.7\u00b0N and longitude 64.2\u00b0E which put it about 700 miles (1130 km) northeast of Port Louis, Mauritius.\u00a0 Fantala was moving toward the west at 10 m.p.h. (16 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 105 m.p.h. (170 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 125 m.p.h. (200 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 956 mb.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) was 17.8, the Hurricane Size Index (HSI) was 14.6 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) was 32.4.<\/p>\n
Both the organization and size of the circulation of Fantala increased on Wednesday.\u00a0 A complete eyewall formed around an eye at the center of the tropical cyclone.\u00a0 Other well formed bands of thunderstorms developed and wrapped around the core of Fantala.\u00a0 The structure of the tropical cyclone is much more symmetrical and there are thunderstorms in all quadrants of the circulation.\u00a0 Winds to hurricane force extended out 35 miles (55 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 Thunderstorms around the core of Fantala generated upper level divergence which pumped out mass and allowed the surface pressure to decrease.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Fantala is an environment favorable for further intensification.\u00a0 Fantala is over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 The upper level winds are light and there is very little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 The structure of Fantala will allow it to use the energy from the ocean very efficiently.\u00a0 Fantala is likely to continue to intensify on Thursday and it could become the equivalent of a major hurricane.\u00a0 As Fantala gets stronger, concentric eyewalls could develop and the resulting eyewall replacement cycles could produce fluctuations in intensity.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge located to the south of Fantala is steering it toward the west and that general steering motion is expected to continue during the next several days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Fantala will pass north of Mauritus and La Reunion during the weekend.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Fantala could be near northern Madagascar in a few days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Fantala grew in size and intensity on Wednesday.\u00a0 At 8:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday the center of Tropical Cyclone Fantala was located at latitude 12.7\u00b0N and longitude 64.2\u00b0E which put it about 700 miles (1130 km) northeast of Port Louis, Mauritius.\u00a0 Fantala was moving toward the west at 10 m.p.h. (16 km\/h).\u00a0 The […]<\/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":[350,352,84,85,74,353,349],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2335"}],"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=2335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2336,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2335\/revisions\/2336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}