Tropical Cyclone Fantala continued to get stronger on Friday and it is now the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday the center of Tropical Cyclone Fantala was located at latitude 12.4\u00b0S and longitude 57.6\u00b0E which put it about 530 miles (860 km) north of Port Louis, Mauritius.\u00a0 Fantala was moving toward the west at 8 m.p.h. (13 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed\u00a0 was 150 m.p.h. (240 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 185 m.p.h. (295 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 926 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Fantala is very well organized.\u00a0 There is a ring of strong thunderstorms surrounding a well formed eye.\u00a0 Other spiral bands are rotating near the core of the circulation.\u00a0 Thunderstorms are generating upper level divergence which is pumping out large amounts of mass and allowing the surface pressure to decrease further.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) for Tropical Cyclone Fantala is 31.6.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) is 18.4 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) is 50.0.<\/p>\n
Fantala continues to exist in an environment favorable for intensification.\u00a0 It is over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 The upper level winds are weak and there is little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Fantala could become the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 Fantala appeared to go through an eyewall replacement cycle on Thursday and further cycles could produce additional fluctuations in intensity.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge located southwest of Fantala is steering the tropical cyclone toward the west.\u00a0 Movement toward the west or west-northwest is expected during the next 24 to 48 hours.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Fantala could be northeast of the northern tip of Madagascar by the end of the weekend.\u00a0 Fantala is a powerful, dangerous tropical cyclone and it would be capable of doing regional serious damage if it made landfall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Fantala continued to get stronger on Friday and it is now the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday the center of Tropical Cyclone Fantala was located at latitude 12.4\u00b0S and longitude 57.6\u00b0E which put it about 530 miles (860 km) north of Port […]<\/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":[350,84,85,74,351,349],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342"}],"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=2342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2343,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342\/revisions\/2343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}