Tropical Cyclone Fantala intensified further on Saturday and it is almost the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 8:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Tropical Cyclone Fantala was located at latitude 11.1\u00b0S and longitude 53.4\u00b0E which put it about 620 miles north of St. Denis, La Reunion.\u00a0 Fantala was moving toward the west-northwest at 12 m.p.h. (19 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 155 m.p.h. (250 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 190 m.p.h. (305 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 922 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Fantala increased in both intensity and size again on Saturday.\u00a0 Hurricane force winds now extend out about 60 miles (95 km) south of the center of circulation.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) for Fantala is 33.3.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) is 18.7 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) is 52.0.<\/p>\n
The circulation of Tropical Cyclone Fantala is very well organized.\u00a0 It has a clearly visible eye on satellite imagery.\u00a0 The eye is surrounded by a ring of strong thunderstorms.\u00a0 Additional bands of thunderstorms are rotating around the core of the circulation.\u00a0 The thunderstorms are generating strong upper level divergence which is pumping out mass in all directions.<\/p>\n
The environment around Tropical Cyclone Fantala is favorable.\u00a0 It is over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 29\u00b0C.\u00a0 The upper level winds are weak and there is little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Fantala could intensify a little more during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 If one of the rainbands wraps around the existing eye, and eyewall replacement cycle could cause fluctuations of intensity.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge southwest of Fantala is steering the tropical cyclone toward the west-northwest.\u00a0 That general motion is expected to continue for another 24 to 36 hours.\u00a0 In a day or so Fantala will move into an area where the steering currents are weaker and it could slow down or stall.\u00a0 Eventually a northwesterly flow is forecast turn Tropical Cyclone Fantala back toward the southeast.\u00a0 However, guidance from numerical models differs on when and where the southeasterly turn will occur.<\/p>\n
On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Fantala could be near the northern end of Madagascar in a day or two.\u00a0 The current size and intensity of Fantala means that it could produce regional significant damage if it were to hit land.\u00a0 The future track of Fantala will determine if the tropical cyclone has an impact on Madagascar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Fantala intensified further on Saturday and it is almost the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 8:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Tropical Cyclone Fantala was located at latitude 11.1\u00b0S and longitude 53.4\u00b0E which put it about 620 miles north of St. Denis, La Reunion.\u00a0 Fantala […]<\/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\/2346"}],"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=2346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2347,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2346\/revisions\/2347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}