Tropical Cyclone Ernie formed northwest of Australia on Thursday.\u00a0 At 2:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Cyclone Ernie was located at latitude 14.1\u00b0S and longitude 110.9\u00b0E which put it about 580 miles (940 km) north-northwest of Exmouth, Australia.\u00a0 Ernie was moving toward the south-southwest at 5 m.p.h. (7 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 45 m.p.h. (75 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 60 m.p.h. (100 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 995 mb.<\/p>\n
Thunderstorms developed around a small area of low pressure south of Indonesia during the past several days.\u00a0 The storms consolidated near the center of circulation on Thursday and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology designated the system as Tropical Cyclone Ernie.\u00a0 Ernie does have a well organized low level center of circulation, but many of the thunderstorms are occurring just to the west of the center of circulation.\u00a0 There are also several bands of showers and thunderstorms in the southeastern quadrant of the circulation.\u00a0 The thunderstorms near the center are generating upper level divergence which is pumping out mass to the south and southeast of Tropical Cyclone Ernie.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Ernie is in an environment that is favorable for intensification.\u00a0 It is moving over water where the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 An upper level ridge southeast of Ernie is generating northerly winds which are cause some vertical wind shear over the tropical cyclone.\u00a0 However, the vertical wind shear is not strong enough to prevent further intensification of Tropical Cyclone Ernie.\u00a0 Ernie should intensify during the next 24 hours and it could intensify rapidly during that time.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Ernie will move into an unfavorable environment in a day or two.\u00a0 Ernie will move over cooler SSTs and into a region where stronger upper level winds will produce more vertical wind shear.\u00a0 The tropical cyclone will weaken at that time.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge centered southeast of Ernie is steering the tropical cyclone slowly toward the south-southwest.\u00a0 The ridge is forecast to strengthen and extend farther to the west.\u00a0 When the ridge extends westward, it will steer Tropical Cyclone Ernie more toward the west.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Ernie currently poses no threat to land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Ernie formed northwest of Australia on Thursday.\u00a0 At 2:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Cyclone Ernie was located at latitude 14.1\u00b0S and longitude 110.9\u00b0E which put it about 580 miles (940 km) north-northwest of Exmouth, Australia.\u00a0 Ernie was moving toward the south-southwest at 5 m.p.h. (7 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,48,2],"tags":[652,78,70,653,612,651],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797"}],"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=3797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3798,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3797\/revisions\/3798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}