Tropical Cyclone Ella strengthened on Wednesday as it moved closer to Wallis and Futuna.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday the center of Tropical Cyclone Ella was located at latitude 14.4\u00b0S and longitude 177.0\u00b0W which put it about 75 miles (120 km) east of Wallis and Futuna.\u00a0 Ella was moving toward the west at 3 m.p.h. (5 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 65 m.p.h. (105 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 80 m.p.h. (130 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 989 mb.<\/p>\n
The circulation of Tropical Cyclone Ella exhibited better organization on Wednesday.\u00a0 A circular eye with a diameter of 25 miles (40 km) was evident on some microwave satellite images.\u00a0 A ring of thunderstorms surrounded the eye.\u00a0 Additional bands of showers and thunderstorms developed in the eastern half of the circulation.\u00a0 Storms in the core of the circulation generated upper level divergence which pumped out mass and allowed the surface pressure to decrease.\u00a0 The size of the circulation of Tropical Cyclone Ella is small.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force only extend out about 100 miles (160 km) fro the center of circulation.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Ella will move through an area that will be favorable for intensification.\u00a0 Ella will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 The upper level winds are weak and there is little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Ella could intensify into the equivalent of a hurricane\/typhoon on Thursday.\u00a0 However, because the size of the circulation is small, any future increase in the vertical wind shear could quickly weaken Tropical Cyclone Ella.<\/p>\n
Ella is moving around the northern side of a subtropical ridge, which is steering the tropical cyclone toward the west.\u00a0 Ella is currently moving north of a weaker section of the ridge and the steering winds are weaker.\u00a0 So, Ella is moving more slowly.\u00a0 The ridge is expected to steer Tropical Cyclone Ella in a general westerly direction during the next several days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Ella could pass near Wallis and Futuna in 12 to 18 hours.\u00a0 It could be near hurricane\/typhoon strength at that time.\u00a0 Ella could approach the northeastern part of Fiji in two or three days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Ella strengthened on Wednesday as it moved closer to Wallis and Futuna.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday the center of Tropical Cyclone Ella was located at latitude 14.4\u00b0S and longitude 177.0\u00b0W which put it about 75 miles (120 km) east of Wallis and Futuna.\u00a0 Ella was moving toward the west at 3 […]<\/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":[679,89,301,351,307,682,683],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3971"}],"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=3971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3972,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3971\/revisions\/3972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}