Tropical Depression Six intensified on Wednesday and the National Hurricane Center named it Tropical Storm Fiona.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday the center of Tropical Storm Fiona was located at latitude 15.1\u00b0N and longitude 37.8\u00b0W which put it about 1545 miles (2490 km) east of the Leeward Islands.\u00a0 Fiona was moving toward the northwest at 16 m.p.h. (26 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 40 m.p.h. (65 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 1006 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Storm Fiona has a small circulation and winds to tropical storm force only extend out about 25 miles (40 km) from the center circulation.\u00a0 Most of the thunderstorms are occurring close to the center of circulation.\u00a0 Those thunderstorms are generating some upper level divergence, but it does not extend very far from the core of Tropical Storm Fiona.\u00a0 There are bands of lower clouds and showers rotating around the core of Fiona.<\/p>\n
Tropical Storm Fiona is moving through an environment that is mostly favorable for intensification.\u00a0 It is moving over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 27\u00b0C.\u00a0 An upper level ridge north of Fiona is generating northeasterly winds which are blowing across the top of the tropical storm.\u00a0 Those winds are causing some vertical wind shear, but it should only inhibit, but not stop, intensification.\u00a0 There is drier air northwest of Fiona and that is the main negative factor in the environment.\u00a0 If the drier air gets pulled into the core of Tropical Storm Fiona, it will reduce the supply of energy and weaken Fiona.\u00a0 Since the core of Fiona is so small, the tropical storm could intensify or weaken very quickly as the environmental conditions change.<\/p>\n
The subtropical high that extends from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean is splitting into an eastern ridge and a western ridge.\u00a0 Tropical Storm Fiona is moving toward the weakness where the split is occurring.\u00a0 This is producing a motion toward the northwest and that general motion is expected to continue during the next several days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Storm Fiona could be northeast of the Leeward Islands in a few days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Depression Six intensified on Wednesday and the National Hurricane Center named it Tropical Storm Fiona.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday the center of Tropical Storm Fiona was located at latitude 15.1\u00b0N and longitude 37.8\u00b0W which put it about 1545 miles (2490 km) east of the Leeward Islands.\u00a0 Fiona was moving toward the northwest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[154,156,31,140,463,464],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799"}],"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=2799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2800,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799\/revisions\/2800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}