An area of low pressure northwest of Western Australia developed into Tropical Cyclone Frances on Thursday.\u00a0 At 10:00 a.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Cyclone Frances was located at latitude 11.0\u00b0S and longitude 128.3\u00b0E which put it about 255 miles (410 km) north-northeast of Kalumburu, Australia.\u00a0 Frances was moving toward the west-southwest at 12 m.p.h. (19 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. (110 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 997 mb.<\/p>\n
The organization of Tropical Cyclone Frances improved significantly during the past 24 hours.\u00a0 A well organized center of circulation developed at the surface.\u00a0 A primary rainband wrapped about two-thirds of the way around the southern and western sides of the center.\u00a0 Additional bands of showers and thunderstorms formed in the outer portions of the circulation.\u00a0 Thunderstorms near the core of the circulation generated upper level divergence which was pumping mass away to the south of the tropical cyclone.\u00a0 Frances is a fairly small tropical cyclone and winds to tropical storm force only extend out about 100 miles (160 km) from the center.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Frances will move through an environment that will be favorable for intensification during the next 24 to 36 hours.\u00a0 Frances will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C while is moves across the Timor Sea.\u00a0 An upper level ridge east of Tropical Cyclone Frances is producing northeasterly winds which are blowing toward the top of the circulation.\u00a0 Vertical wind shear may be the reason that the primary rainband wrapped around the southern and western sides of the center.\u00a0 However, the vertical shear does not appear to be strong enough to significantly affect the upper level divergence.\u00a0 Frances is likely to intensify during the next day or so.\u00a0 Eventually, Tropical Cyclone Frances will move into an area where there are strong upper level northwesterly winds.\u00a0 A significant increase in vertical wind shear should weaken Frances when that occurs.<\/p>\n
A subtropical ridge to the east of Frances is steering the tropical cyclone toward the west-southwest.\u00a0 A general motion toward the west-southwest is expected to continue during the next few days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track the center of Tropical Cyclone Frances is forecast to stay north of the coast of Western Australia.\u00a0 However, any southward deviation of the track could bring stronger winds closer to the coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An area of low pressure northwest of Western Australia developed into Tropical Cyclone Frances on Thursday.\u00a0 At 10:00 a.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Cyclone Frances was located at latitude 11.0\u00b0S and longitude 128.3\u00b0E which put it about 255 miles (410 km) north-northeast of Kalumburu, Australia.\u00a0 Frances was moving toward the west-southwest at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,2,5],"tags":[672,78,83,673,641,671,94],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3897"}],"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=3897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3898,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3897\/revisions\/3898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}