Hurricane Ophelia moved closer to the Azores on Friday.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday the center of Hurricane Ophelia was located at latitude 32.3\u00b0N and longitude 31.8\u00b0W which put it about 480 miles (770 km) southwest of the Azores.\u00a0 Ophelia was moving toward the east-northeast at 13 m.p.h. (20 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 100 m.p.h. (160 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 120 m.p.h. (195 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 971 mb.<\/p>\n
Despite moving over slightly cooler water, Hurricane Ophelia maintained its structure and intensity on Friday.\u00a0 There was a small circular eye at the center of circulation, although there appeared to be a break on the northwest side of the ring of thunderstorms around the eye.\u00a0 Thunderstorms in the core of Ophelia were generating upper level divergence which was pumping away mass.\u00a0 Bands of showers and thunderstorms were revolving around the core of Hurricane Ophelia.\u00a0 The stronger rainbands were in the eastern half of the circulation.\u00a0 Winds to hurricane force extended out about 25 miles (40 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out about 100 miles (160 km) from the center.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Ophelia will move through an environment that is capable of supporting a strong cyclone.\u00a0 Ophelia will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 25\u00b0C.\u00a0 Normally, that water would be too cool to support a strong hurricane.\u00a0 However, the temperature in the upper levels of the atmosphere is also cool and that is keeping the atmosphere unstable enough to allow for thunderstorms to develop.\u00a0 The speed of the winds in Hurricane Ophelia is likely to decrease gradually during the next several days.<\/p>\n
When Hurricane Ophelia moves farther north, it will move into a cooler environment with stronger westerly winds in the upper levels.\u00a0 A cooler environment with more vertical wind shear will cause the structure of Hurricane Ophelia change into the structure of an extratropical cyclone.\u00a0 The area of stronger winds will expand and the cyclone will become much larger.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Ophelia is being steered toward the east-northeast by westerly winds in the middle levels.\u00a0 A trough will approach Hurricane Ophelia from the west.\u00a0 Southwesterly winds ahead of the trough will carry Ophelia more toward the north in about 36 hours.\u00a0 On its anticipated track the center of Hurricane Ophelia will move south of the Azores on Saturday.\u00a0 Ophelia could bring gusty winds and rain to the Azores when it moves by those islands.\u00a0 The strong extratropical cyclone that evolves from Hurricane Ophelia could approach Ireland and the United Kingdom on Monday.\u00a0 That cyclone could bring very strong winds and heavy rain to that region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hurricane Ophelia moved closer to the Azores on Friday.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Friday the center of Hurricane Ophelia was located at latitude 32.3\u00b0N and longitude 31.8\u00b0W which put it about 480 miles (770 km) southwest of the Azores.\u00a0 Ophelia was moving toward the east-northeast at 13 m.p.h. (20 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[840,841,842,845,843,844,322,274],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4999"}],"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=4999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5000,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4999\/revisions\/5000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}