Hurricane Matthew crossed the western end of the Tiburon Peninsula of Haiti on Tuesday morning.\u00a0 The eye emerged intact over the Golfe de la Gonave and the center of Hurricane Matthew is about half way between Haiti and the eastern end of Cuba.\u00a0 At 2:00 pm. EDT on Tuesday the center of Hurricane Matthew was located at latitude 19.4\u00b0N and longitude 74.3\u00b0W which put it about 65 miles (105 km) east-southeast of Guantanamo, Cuba.\u00a0 Matthew was moving toward the north at 10 m.p.h. (16 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 145 m.p.h. (230 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 170 m.p.h. (275 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 949 mb.<\/p>\n
A Hurricane Watch has been issued for the portion of the coast of Florida from Deerfield Beach to the Volusia\/Brevard County line.\u00a0 A Tropical Storm Watch has been issued from Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys to Deerfield Beach.\u00a0 Hurricane Warnings are in effect for Haiti and the Cuban provinces of Guantanamo, Santiago de Cuba, Holguin, Granma and Las Tunas.\u00a0 Hurricane Warnings are also in effect for the Southeastern Bahamas including the Inaguas, Mayaguana, Acklins, Crooked Island, Long Cay, Ragged Island, and for the Central Bahamas including Long Island, Exuma, Rum Cay, San Salvador and Cat Island.\u00a0 A Hurricane Warning is in effect for the northwestern Bahamas including the Abacos, Andros Island, Berry Islands, Bimini, Eleuthera, Grand Bahama Island and New Providence.\u00a0 A Hurricane Watch has been issued for the Cuban province of Camaguey.\u00a0 A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the Turks and Caicos and the south coast of the Dominican Republic from Barahona to Haiti.\u00a0 Tropical Storm Watches have been issued for the northern coast of the Dominican Republic from Puerto la Plata to Haiti.<\/p>\n
Even after passing over the mountains of the Massif de la Hotte on the southwestern peninsula of Haiti, the structure of Hurricane Matthew remained well organized.\u00a0 Matthew has a circular eye with a diameter of 24 miles (39 km).\u00a0 The eye is surrounded by a ring of strong thunderstorms.\u00a0 The wind field around Hurricane Matthew actually expanded after it crossed southwestern Haiti.\u00a0 Winds to hurricane force extend out about 60 miles (95 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 Thunderstorms around the eye are generating upper level divergence which is pumping out mass in all directions.\u00a0 Additional rainbands are rotating around the core of Matthew.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Matthew is moving through a very favorable environment.\u00a0 It is moving over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 The winds in the upper levels are weak and the is little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Hurricane Matthew could weaken slightly when the center passes over eastern Cuba, but it will likely restrengthen when it moves over the very warm water around the Bahamas.\u00a0 Matthew is likely to remain a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. and it could become a Category 5 hurricane while it is moving over the Bahamas.\u00a0 Hurricane Joaquin almost reached Category 5 while it was near the Bahamas in early October last year.<\/p>\n
Matthew is moving around the western end of subtropical high pressure system, which is steering the hurricane toward the north.\u00a0 That general motion is expected to continue for another 12 hours or so.\u00a0 The high is expected to strengthen and extend west on Wednesday.\u00a0 When that happens, Hurricane Matthew will be steered more toward the northwest.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Hurricane Matthew will move across the eastern end of Cuba later on Tuesday and across the Bahamas on Wednesday.\u00a0 Hurricane Matthew could be very near the east coast of Florida on Thursday.\u00a0 Matthew could come very close to the coast of South Carolina on Friday and it could be near the coast of North Carolina on Saturday morning.\u00a0 It is still not clear if the eye of Hurricane Matthew will reach landfall in any of those places.<\/p>\n
The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) for Matthew is 29.8.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) is 19.5 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) is 49.3.\u00a0 Those indices mean that Hurricane Matthew is capable of causing regional significant wind damage.\u00a0 Matthew will also generate a significant storm surge over eastern Cuba and the Bahamas.\u00a0 Water level rises will occur along the southeast coast of the U.S. where easterly winds push the water toward the shore.\u00a0 Hurricane Matthew is stronger, but a little smaller than Hurricane Jeanne was in 2004, when Jeanne made landfall on the coast of Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hurricane Matthew crossed the western end of the Tiburon Peninsula of Haiti on Tuesday morning.\u00a0 The eye emerged intact over the Golfe de la Gonave and the center of Hurricane Matthew is about half way between Haiti and the eastern end of Cuba.\u00a0 At 2:00 pm. EDT on Tuesday the center of Hurricane Matthew was […]<\/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":[540,541,145,144,51,98,26,542,448,100,99,97],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3176"}],"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=3176"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3181,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3176\/revisions\/3181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}