Tropical Cyclone Dudzai strengthened to the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale on Monday.\u00a0 At 4:00 p.m. EST on Monday the center of the Tropical Cyclone Dudzai was located at latitude 17.1\u00b0S and longitude 78.0\u00b0E which put the center about 775 miles (1255 km) south-southeast of Diego Garcia.\u00a0 Dudzai was moving toward the south-southeast at 3 m.p.h. (5 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 130 m.p.h. (210 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 160 m.p.h. (260 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 948 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Dudzai continued to intensify on Monday afternoon.\u00a0 Dudzai strengthened to the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 A small circular eye was present at the center of Tropical Cyclone Dudzai.\u00a0 The eye was surrounded by a ring of thunderstorms and the strongest winds were occurring in that ring of storms.\u00a0 Bands of showers and thunderstorms were revolving around the core of Dudzai\u2019s circulation.\u00a0 Storms near the core of Dudzai generated upper level divergence that pumped mass away from the tropical cyclone.\u00a0 The removal of mass caused the surface pressure to continue to decrease.<\/p>\n
The circulation around Tropical Cyclone Dudzai was small.\u00a0 Winds to hurricane\/typhoon force extended out 30 miles (50 km) from the center of Dudzai\u2019s circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out 80 miles (130 km) from the center of Tropical Cyclone Dudzai.<\/p>\n
The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) for Tropical Cyclone Dudzai is 25.1.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) is 10.5 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) is 35.6.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Dudzai is similar in intensity to Hurricane Harvey when Harvey hit Texas in 2017.\u00a0 Dudzai is slightly smaller than Harvey was.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Dudzai will move through an environment that will become less favorable for intensification during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 It will move under the middle of an upper level ridge that is over the South Indian Ocean.\u00a0 The upper level winds are weak in the middle of the ridge and there will be little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 However, the strong winds in the lower levels of Dudzai’s circulation will mix cooler water to the surface of the South Indian Ocean.\u00a0 The cooler water will transfer less energy into Tropical Cyclone Dudzai.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Dudzai is likely to weaken during the next 24 hours due to the upwelling of cooler water.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Dudzai will move through a region where the steering winds are weak during the next 12 hours.\u00a0 Dudzai is likely to move slowly toward the south during that time period.\u00a0 A high pressure system that is southwest of Dudzai will start to steer it toward the west on Wednesday.\u00a0 On its anticipated track, Tropical Cyclone Dudzai will remain far to the south of Diego Garcia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Dudzai strengthened to the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale on Monday.\u00a0 At 4:00 p.m. EST on Monday the center of the Tropical Cyclone Dudzai was located at latitude 17.1\u00b0S and longitude 78.0\u00b0E which put the center about 775 miles (1255 km) south-southeast of Diego Garcia.\u00a0 Dudzai was moving […]<\/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":[973,352,4081,650,974,4080],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23860"}],"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=23860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23861,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23860\/revisions\/23861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}