Tropical Cyclone Caleb formed over the South Indian Ocean on Thursday.\u00a0 At 8:00 a.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Cyclone Caleb was located at latitude 13.0\u00b0S and longitude 100.7\u00b0E which put it about 255 miles (410 km) east-southeast of Cocos Island.\u00a0 Caleb was moving toward the south-southeast at 6 m.p.h. (9 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 65 m.p.h. (105 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 995 mb.<\/p>\n
Although there is a well defined low level circulation in Tropical Cyclone Caleb, the distribution of thunderstorms is asymmetrical.\u00a0 The strongest thunderstorms are occurring in the northwestern quadrant of the circulation and they are in the primary rainband.\u00a0 Those thunderstorms contain the strongest winds.\u00a0 There are few thunderstorms in the other parts of the circulation, although there are some bands of lower clouds and showers in those regions.\u00a0 The thunderstorms in the primary rainband are generating upper level divergence which is pumping out mass to the west of Tropical Cyclone Caleb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Caleb is in an environment that is marginal for intensification.\u00a0 Caleb is moving over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 28\u00b0C.\u00a0 So, there is enough energy in the upper ocean to support intensification.\u00a0 However, an upper level ridge located southeast of Caleb is producing easterly winds which are blowing across the top of the tropical cyclone.\u00a0 The easterly winds are generating moderate vertical wind shear and the shear is probably the reason why most of the thunderstorms are occurring in the northwestern quadrant of the circulation.\u00a0 The moderate shear will inhibit intensification, but some strengthening may be possible if the upper level winds abate.<\/p>\n
A ridge to the east of Caleb is steering the tropical cyclone toward the south-southeast and that general motion is expected to continue for another day or two.\u00a0 Eventually, a second ridge is forecast to strengthen and steer Tropical Caleb back toward the northwest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Caleb formed over the South Indian Ocean on Thursday.\u00a0 At 8:00 a.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Cyclone Caleb was located at latitude 13.0\u00b0S and longitude 100.7\u00b0E which put it about 255 miles (410 km) east-southeast of Cocos Island.\u00a0 Caleb was moving toward the south-southeast at 6 m.p.h. (9 km\/h).\u00a0 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,2],"tags":[643,78,644,339,642],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3742"}],"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=3742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3743,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3742\/revisions\/3743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}