Tropical Cyclone Abela formed over the South Indian Ocean in the middle of winter on Sunday.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday the center of Tropical Cyclone Abela was located at latitude 12.9\u00b0S and longitude 62.4\u00b0E which put it about 640 miles (1030 km) northeast of Port Louis, Mauritius.\u00a0 Abela was moving toward the west-southwest at 18 m.p.h. (29 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 65 m.p.h. (105 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 989 mb.<\/p>\n
Enough spiral banding developed in a low pressure system over the South Indian Ocean to allow the system to be classified as Tropical Cyclone Abela.\u00a0 The circulation is not well organized.\u00a0 Most of the thunderstorms were located in a thin primary rainband that wrapped around the western side of the center of circulation.\u00a0 The other rainbands contained shallower clouds.\u00a0 There was enough convection to produce some upper level divergence.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extend out about 150 miles (240 km) from the center of circulation.<\/p>\n
The environment around Tropical Cyclone Abela is only marginal for further intensification.\u00a0 It is moving over water where the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is near 26\u00b0C.\u00a0 Northeasterly winds in the upper levels are creating a moderate amount of vertical wind shear.\u00a0 The wind shear will limit the potential for intensification during the short term.\u00a0 In about a day or so Abela will move over cooler SSTs and it should start to weaken.<\/p>\n
A ridge of high pressure located east of Abela is steering the tropical cyclone toward the west-southwest and that general motion is expected to continue for another day or two.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Abela will pass north of Mauritius and La Reunion.\u00a0 Abela is expected to reach the western end of the ridge and recurve toward the south as it nears the east coast of Madagascar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Abela formed over the South Indian Ocean in the middle of winter on Sunday.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday the center of Tropical Cyclone Abela was located at latitude 12.9\u00b0S and longitude 62.4\u00b0E which put it about 640 miles (1030 km) northeast of Port Louis, Mauritius.\u00a0 Abela was moving toward the west-southwest […]<\/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":[425,84,85,74,426,424],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623"}],"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=2623"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2627,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions\/2627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}