Dangerous Super Typhoon Nepartak closed in on Taiwan on Wednesday.\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Wednesday the center of Typhoon Nepartak was located at latitude 20.5\u00b0N and longitude 126.3\u00b0E which put it about 480 miles (775 km) southeast of Taipei, Taiwan. Nepartak was moving toward the west-northwest at 19 m.p.h. (31 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 175 m.p.h. (280 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 210 m.p.h. (335 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 911 mb.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Nepartak is the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) for Nepartak was 40.3.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) was 18.8 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) was 59.1.\u00a0 These indices mean that Typhoon Nepartak is capable of producing regional catastrophic damage.\u00a0 As a point of comparison, Typhoon Nepartak is almost as strong as and slightly smaller than Hurricane Rita was when Rita was a Category 5 hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico in 2005.<\/p>\n
The circulation of Typhoon Nepartak is very well organized.\u00a0 It is symmetrical and winds to typhoon force extend out about 45 miles (75 km) from the center.\u00a0 There is a very small eye at the center of Nepartak and the eye is surrounded by a ring of very strong thunderstorms.\u00a0 The thunderstorms around the eye are generating strong upper level divergence which is offsetting the flow of mass into the typhoon near the surface.\u00a0 The upper level divergence is allowing the pressure to stay low and strong winds to persist.\u00a0 Spiral bands of thunderstorms are rotating around the core of the typhoon.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Nepartak is in an ideal environment for a tropical cyclone.\u00a0 It is moving over water where the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is near 31\u00b0C.\u00a0 The upper level winds are weak and there is almost no vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Typhoon Nepartak is likely to maintain its intensity as it approaches the coast of Taiwan.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge northeast of Nepartak is steering the typhoon toward the west-northwest and that general motion is expected to continue for another 24 to 36 hours.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Typhoon Nepartak will make landfall along the central portion of the east coast of Taiwan in 12 to 18 hours.\u00a0 After it moves across Taiwan, Nepartak is expected to make another landfall on the east coast of China.<\/p>\n
Nepartak is a strong and dangerous typhoon.\u00a0 It is capable of causing catastrophic damage over portions of Taiwan.\u00a0 Nepartak will also produce very rainfall which is likely to cause flash floods and mudslides.\u00a0 Nepartak will weaken when it moves over Taiwan, but it could still be a typhoon when it reaches the east coast of China.\u00a0 Nepartak could also bring heavy rain and floods to parts of eastern China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dangerous Super Typhoon Nepartak closed in on Taiwan on Wednesday.\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Wednesday the center of Typhoon Nepartak was located at latitude 20.5\u00b0N and longitude 126.3\u00b0E which put it about 480 miles (775 km) southeast of Taipei, Taiwan. Nepartak was moving toward the west-northwest at 19 m.p.h. (31 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[406,43,44,130,42,412,407],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575"}],"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=2575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2576,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions\/2576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}