Strong Typhoon Malakas made the expected turn toward the north on Friday and it began to move parallel to the east coast of Taiwan toward the southwesternmost Ryukyu Islands.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday the center of Typhoon Malakas was located at latitude 23.4\u00b0N and longitude 123.0\u00b0E which put it about 100 miles (160 km) southwest of Ishigaki, Japan.\u00a0 Malakas was moving toward the north at 10 m.p.h. (16 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 130 m.p.h. (215 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 160 m.p.h. (260 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 937 mb.<\/p>\n
Malakas is a strong well organized typhoon.\u00a0 It has a well formed eye at the center of circulation surrounded by a ring of strong thunderstorms.\u00a0 Additional bands of thunderstorms are rotating around the core of Malakas and there are more thunderstorms in the southern half of the circulation.\u00a0 Winds to typhoon force extend out about 35 miles (55 km) in all directions from the center of circulation.\u00a0 The upper level divergence is strongest to the south of Typhoon Malakas.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Malakas is in a very favorable environment.\u00a0 It is moving over water where the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is near 29\u00b0C.\u00a0 The upper level winds are not too strong and there is little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Typhoon Malakas could intensify a little more during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 When Typhoon Malakas moves farther north, it will move over cooler SSTs.\u00a0 In addition there is an upper level trough over eastern China which will cause southwesterly winds and increasing vertical wind shear when Malakas gets farther north.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Malakas is moving around the western end of a subtropical ridge and it is likely to continue to move north for another 24 hours or so.\u00a0 In about a day, the upper level trough over eastern China will start to turn Malakas toward the northeast.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Typhoon Malakas could approach southwestern Kyushu in about three days.<\/p>\n
The center of Typhoon Malakas is passing east of Taiwan.\u00a0 Some of the rainbands in the western part of the circulation will move over Taiwan, but the core of the typhoon where the strongest wind is occurring will stay east of there.\u00a0 The center of Malakas will pass west of Ishigaki and Okinawa, but it could move over some of the smaller islands at the very southwestern end of the Ryukyu Islands.\u00a0 Malakas could cause significant damage on those islands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Strong Typhoon Malakas made the expected turn toward the north on Friday and it began to move parallel to the east coast of Taiwan toward the southwesternmost Ryukyu Islands.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday the center of Typhoon Malakas was located at latitude 23.4\u00b0N and longitude 123.0\u00b0E which put it about 100 miles (160 […]<\/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":[166,43,44,133,194,130,42,521,167],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3033"}],"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=3033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3034,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3033\/revisions\/3034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}