Strong Typhoon Meranti is near a landfall on the east coast of China close to Xiamen.\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Wednesday the center of Typhoon Meranti was located at latitude 23.9\u00b0N and longitude 118.4\u00b0E which put it about 40 miles (65 km) south-southeast of Xiamen, China.\u00a0 Meranti was moving toward the northwest at 14 m.p.h. (22 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 145 m.p.h. (235 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 175 m.p.h. (280 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 931 mb.<\/p>\n
Meranti has weakened during the past 24 hours, but it remains a strong typhoon.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) for Typhoon Meranti is 29.9.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) is 24.5 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index is 54.4.\u00a0 These indices suggest that Typhoon Meranti is capable of causing widespread significant damage when it makes landfall.\u00a0 As a comparison, the HII for Hurricane Ivan just before it made landfall on the Gulf Coast in 2004 was 22.1, the HSI was 34.1 and the HWISI was 56.2.\u00a0 Thus, Typhoon Meranti is stronger than Hurricane Ivan was, but Meranti is also smaller than Ivan was in 2004.\u00a0 The HWISI for Typhoon Meranti is close to what it was for Hurricane Ivan.<\/p>\n
The center and inner eyewall of Typhoon Meranti moved just south of the southern end of Taiwan.\u00a0 Since the eyewall stayed over water, it remained intact.\u00a0 However, the outer concentric eyewall and much of the northern half of the circulation did move across Taiwan.\u00a0 Flow over the mountains on Taiwan did weaken the northern half of the circulation, while the center and southern half of the circulation remained intact.\u00a0 Since the core of the circulation stayed over the water, Typhoon Meranti stayed stronger than it would have if the inner eye had moved over Taiwan.<\/p>\n
Most of the stronger thunderstorms and heavier rain are near the center of circulation and south of the center.\u00a0 There are rainbands in other parts of Typhoon Meranti and some of those rainbands are already bringing heavy rain to parts of eastern China.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Meranti is moving around the western end of a subtropical ridge which is steering it toward the northwest.\u00a0 Meranti is expected to turn more toward the north as it move inland over China.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Typhoon Meranti is expected to move northwest over Fujian province and then turn north toward Nanchang.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Meranti is capable of causing significant wind damage over eastern China.\u00a0 In addtion strong winds will create a significant storm surge along the coast near Xiamen.\u00a0 Heavy rain will spread inland over Fujian province and the rain could create the potential for flooding over parts of eastern China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Strong Typhoon Meranti is near a landfall on the east coast of China close to Xiamen.\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Wednesday the center of Typhoon Meranti was located at latitude 23.9\u00b0N and longitude 118.4\u00b0E which put it about 40 miles (65 km) south-southeast of Xiamen, China.\u00a0 Meranti was moving toward the northwest at 14 […]<\/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":[514,43,44,194,130,42,96,517,520],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015"}],"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=3015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3016,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3015\/revisions\/3016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}