Tropical Storm Matthew strengthened into a hurricane on Thursday as it moved over the eastern Caribbean Sea.\u00a0 At 8:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Hurricane Matthew was located at latitude 14.2\u00b0N and longitude 68.1\u00b0W which put it about 150 miles (240 km) north-northeast of Curacao.\u00a0 Matthew was moving toward the west at 15 m.p.h. (24 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 75 m.p.h. (120 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 90 m.p.h. (145 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 987 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Storm Watches are in effect for Curacao, Bonaire and Aruba.\u00a0 The government of Columbia has also issued a Tropical Storm Watch for the portion of the coast from the Columbia\/Venezuela border to Riohacha.<\/p>\n
The structure of Hurricane Matthew became much better organized on Thursday.\u00a0 A primary rainband wrapped around the center of circulation.\u00a0 An eye appears to be forming.\u00a0 A ring of strong thunderstorms surrounds the eye on all sides except to the south.\u00a0 Additional bands of thunderstorms developed in the northern and eastern parts of the circulation.\u00a0 The storms near the eye generated upper level divergence which pumped out mass to the north and east of Hurricane Matthew.\u00a0 The upper level divergence pumped out enough mass to allow the minimum pressure to decrease by 17 mb during the past 24 hours.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Matthew will be moving into an environment that will be favorable for intensification.\u00a0 It will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 An upper level trough over the western Caribbean Sea and an upper level ridge just east of Matthew are producing southwesterly winds which are blowing across the top of the hurricane.\u00a0 The vertical wind shear made Hurricane Matthew’s structure asymmetrical earlier today, but the shear has been less in recent hours.\u00a0 The effect of the wind shear will be to slow the rate of intensification, but it will not prevent intensification.\u00a0 Hurricane Matthew will pass just north of the cost of South America and drier air could also slow the rate of intensification.<\/p>\n
A strong subtropical high pressure system to the north of Matthew is steering the hurricane toward the west and that general motion is expected to continue for about another 48 hours.\u00a0 When Hurricane Matthew reaches the western end of the ridge, it will turn toward the north.\u00a0 Guidance from the numerical models continues to be quite divergent about when, where and how sharp the turn will be.\u00a0 If Hurricane Matthew turns sooner and sharper, it could move over Haiti early next week.\u00a0 On the other hand, if Matthew turns later and more gradually, it could affect Jamaica and eastern Cuba.\u00a0 It is too early to know which scenario will eventually occur.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Matthew could become a major hurricane over the Caribbean Sea and interests in the Greater Antilles should monitor its progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Storm Matthew strengthened into a hurricane on Thursday as it moved over the eastern Caribbean Sea.\u00a0 At 8:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Hurricane Matthew was located at latitude 14.2\u00b0N and longitude 68.1\u00b0W which put it about 150 miles (240 km) north-northeast of Curacao.\u00a0 Matthew was moving toward the west at 15 […]<\/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":[540,541,543,544,547,145,545,144,26,542,97,546],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127"}],"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=3127"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3128,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127\/revisions\/3128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}