Hurricane Ophelia strengthened into a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale on Saturday morning as it moved south of the Azores.\u00a0 That made Ophelia a major hurricane.\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Hurricane Ophelia was located at latitude 34.8\u00b0N and longitude 26.6\u00b0W which put it about 220 miles (355 km) south of the Azores.\u00a0 Ophelia was moving toward the northeast at 25 m.p.h. (40 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 115 m.p.h. (185 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 135 m.p.h. (220 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 960 mb.<\/p>\n
It is very unusual to have such a strong hurricane near the Azores, but Ophelia contains all of the elements of a major hurricane.\u00a0 There is a circular eye at the center of circulation.\u00a0 The eye is surrounded by a ring of strong thunderstorms and the strongest winds are occurring in that ring of storms.\u00a0 Well formed rainbands exists in the outer portions of the circulation.\u00a0 Storms in the core of Ophelia are generating upper level divergence which is pumping mass away to the northeast of the hurricane.\u00a0 Winds to hurricane force extend out about 40 miles (65 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extend out about 125 miles (205 km) from the center.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Ophelia is moving over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 25\u00b0C.\u00a0 Normally, water at that temperature would be considered to be too cool to support the development of a major hurricane.\u00a0 However, the temperature of the air in the upper troposphere is also cool and so the atmosphere is unstable enough to allow for the development of deep convection.\u00a0 An upper level trough west of Ophelia is producing southwesterly winds which are blowing toward the top of the circulation.\u00a0 There are also southwesterly winds in the lower and middle levels of the atmosphere and so the vertical wind shear is not strong enough to inhibit intensification<\/p>\n
Hurricane Ophelia will be moving over cooler water and it is likely to weaken gradually during the next several days.\u00a0 When Ophelia moves over the cooler water it will make a transition to an extratropical cyclone.\u00a0 The size of the circulation will increase during the transition.\u00a0 Hurricane Ophelia will evolve into a large very powerful extratropical cyclone during the next several days.<\/p>\n
The trough west of Ophelia is steering the hurricane toward the northeast.\u00a0 Hurricane Ophelia is expected to turn more toward the north during the next two or three days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Hurricane Ophelia will pass east of the Azores later today.\u00a0 The strong extratropical cyclone that Ophelia will transition into could approach Ireland and the United Kingdom by Monday morning.\u00a0 That cyclone will bring very strong winds and heavy rain to that region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hurricane Ophelia strengthened into a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale on Saturday morning as it moved south of the Azores.\u00a0 That made Ophelia a major hurricane.\u00a0 At 11:00 a.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Hurricane Ophelia was located at latitude 34.8\u00b0N and longitude 26.6\u00b0W which put it about 220 miles (355 km) […]<\/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":[840,841,849,842,845,843,847,844,322,274,848],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5003"}],"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=5003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5004,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5003\/revisions\/5004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}