A center of circulation developed within an area of thunderstorms west of Guam on Saturday and the system was designated as Tropical Storm Meranti.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Tropical Storm Meranti was located at latitude 16.0\u00b0N and longitude 135.8\u00b0E which put it about 1070 miles (1725 km) east-southeast of Taiwan.\u00a0 Meranti was moving toward the west at 13 m.p.h. (20 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 60 m.p.h. (95 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 75 m.p.h. (120 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 991 mb.<\/p>\n
The circulation of Tropical Storm Meranti is still organizing and the distribution of thunderstorms is asymmetrical.\u00a0 Most of the thunderstorms are occurring east of the center of circulation.\u00a0 There is a cluster of the thunderstorms just to the east of the center.\u00a0 There are also two well formed rainbands east of the core of Tropical Storm Meranti.\u00a0 Additional spiral bands are located in all parts of the tropical storm.\u00a0 The thunderstorms near the center are generating upper level divergence which is pumping out mass in all directions.<\/p>\n
Tropical Storm Meranti is moving through an environment which is favorable for further intensification.\u00a0 It is moving over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 31\u00b0C.\u00a0 An upper level ridge located to the northwest of Meranti is producing northeasterly winds which are blowing across the western portion of the tropical storm.\u00a0 The upper level winds are weaker over the eastern half of the circulation and the vertical wind shear is only slowing the intensification.\u00a0 Although there may be some drier air in the western half of the circulation, Tropical Storm Meranti could intensify into a typhoon on Sunday.\u00a0 Meranti could become a strong typhoon in two or three days.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge north of Tropical Storm Meranti is steering it toward the west.\u00a0 The subtropical ridge is forecast to steer Meranti in a general west-northwesterly direction during the next two or three days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Storm Meranti is expected to approach the area of northern Luzon, Taiwan and the southern Ryukyu Islands in about three days.\u00a0 It could be a strong typhoon at that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A center of circulation developed within an area of thunderstorms west of Guam on Saturday and the system was designated as Tropical Storm Meranti.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Tropical Storm Meranti was located at latitude 16.0\u00b0N and longitude 135.8\u00b0E which put it about 1070 miles (1725 km) east-southeast of Taiwan.\u00a0 […]<\/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":[514,43,45,44,46,194,42,96,513,515],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984"}],"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=2984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2985,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984\/revisions\/2985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}