Tropical Cyclone Fantala continued to intensify on Sunday and it reached the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday the center of Tropical Cyclone Fantala was located at latitude 9.7\u00b0S and longitude 50.5\u00b0E which put it about 190 miles (305 km) north-northeast of Antsira\u00f1ana, Madagascar.\u00a0 Fantala was moving toward the west-northwest at 12 m.p.h. (19 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 175 m.p.h. (280 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 205 m.p.h. (335 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 911 mb.<\/p>\n
Fantala is an extremely well organized tropical cyclone.\u00a0 There is a solid ring of thunderstorms surrounding a clear eye.\u00a0 Other bands of thunderstorms spiral into the core of the circulation.\u00a0 Hurricane force winds extend out about 30 miles (50 km) south of the center.\u00a0 The thunderstorms are generating enough upper level divergence to cause the surface pressure to decrease to 911 mb.<\/p>\n
Fantala is a very powerful tropical cyclone.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) is 40.4, the Hurricane Size (HSI) is 10.5, and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) is 50.9.<\/p>\n
The environment around Tropical Cyclone Fantala is very 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 Fantala could intensify a little more, but it is likely near its maximum intensity.\u00a0 Any increase in the speed of the upper level winds would generate more vertical wind shear and start to weaken Fantala.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge southwest of the tropical cyclone is steering Fantala toward the west-northwest.\u00a0 That general motion is expected to continue for another 12 to 24 hours.\u00a0 Guidance from numerical models predicts that in a day or so a second ridge located northeast of Fantala will begin to steer the tropical cyclone back to the southeast.\u00a0 There is variability in the location and sharpness of the turn to the southeast.\u00a0 If there is a sharp turn to the southeast, the core of Fantala could remain north of Madagascar.\u00a0 If the turn occurs later and\/or is more gradual the core of Fantala could come closer to the northern end of Madagascar.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Fantala is a very dangerous storm.\u00a0 It would be capable of causing catastrophic damage if it were to make landfall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Fantala continued to intensify on Sunday and it reached the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday the center of Tropical Cyclone Fantala was located at latitude 9.7\u00b0S and longitude 50.5\u00b0E which put it about 190 miles (305 km) north-northeast of Antsira\u00f1ana, Madagascar.\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":[350,84,85,74,351,355,354,349],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349"}],"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=2349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2350,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349\/revisions\/2350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}