Tropical Cyclone Ola intensified rapidly on Saturday as it moved over the Coral Sea northwest of New Caledonia.\u00a0 At 8:00 p.m. EST on Saturday the center of Ola was located at latitude 19.9\u00b0S and longitude 162.9\u00b0E which put it about 260 miles northwest of Noumea, New Caledonia.\u00a0 Ola was moving toward the south-southeast at 8 m.p.h.\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 80 m.p.h. and there were gusts to 95 m.p.h.\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 970 mb.<\/p>\n
Ola is moving over warm Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) and the environmental winds are generating upper level divergence to the southeast of the circulation.\u00a0 The divergence pumped out mass and surface pressure decreased rapidly.\u00a0 As a result, Ola intensified into the equivalent of a hurricane on Saturday.\u00a0 Ola will remain over warm SSTs, but it will move into an area of stronger upper level winds when it moves farther southward.\u00a0 It could intensify more during the next 24 hours, but it is likely to begin to weaken in 36 to 48 hours because of increasing vertical wind shear.<\/p>\n
Counterclockwise flow around the western end of a subtropical ridge is steering Ola in a general southward direction.\u00a0 That motion is expected to continue for another 24 hours.\u00a0 A ridge of high pressure is expected to build south of Ola in a day or so.\u00a0 The ridge could block Ola from moving any farther toward the south and turn it toward the southwest.\u00a0 On the expected track, Ola would stay west of New Caledonia.\u00a0 It is expected to weaken before it reaches Australia.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Ola intensified rapidly on Saturday as it moved over the Coral Sea northwest of New Caledonia.\u00a0 At 8:00 p.m. EST on Saturday the center of Ola was located at latitude 19.9\u00b0S and longitude 162.9\u00b0E which put it about 260 miles northwest of Noumea, New Caledonia.\u00a0 Ola was moving toward the south-southeast at 8 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,2],"tags":[78,79],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376"}],"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=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":377,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions\/377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}