Strong Tropical Cyclone Ava made landfall on the east coast of Madagascar near Toamasina on Friday.\u00a0 At 10:00 a.m. EDT on Friday the center of Tropical Cyclone Ava was located near 18.0\u00b0S and longitude 49.2\u00b0E which put it near Toamasina.\u00a0 Ava was moving toward the west-southwest at 7 m.p.h. (11 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 105 m.p.h. (170 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 125 m.p.h. (205 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 959 mb.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Ava was the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Ava intensified rapidly during the past 12 hours and it was still intensifying when it made landfall on the coast of Madagascar.\u00a0 There was a well defined circular eye at the center of circulation.\u00a0 The eye was surrounded by a ring of strong thunderstorms and the strongest winds were occurring in that ring of storms.\u00a0 Several bands of showers and thunderstorms were revolving around the core of the circulation.\u00a0 Thunderstorms in the core of Tropical Cyclone Ava were generating strong upper level divergence which was pumping away mass and allowed the surface pressure to decrease rapidly.\u00a0 Winds to hurricane\/typhoon force extended out about 60 miles (95 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out about 180 miles (290 km) from the center.<\/p>\n
The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) for Tropical Cyclone Ava was 17.8.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) was 17.6 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) was 35.4.\u00a0 Those indices indicate that Tropical Cyclone Ava is capable of causing regional serious damage.\u00a0 The core of Tropical Cyclone Ava passed over Toamasina and there is likely to be serious wind damage in that city.\u00a0 Heavy rain was falling in parts of eastern Madagascar and floods could occur.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Ava could produce a storm surge of 10 feet (3 meters) south of where the center made landfall, because the strong winds will be blowing the water toward the coast.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Ava will weaken while the center moves over land in eastern Madagascar.\u00a0 However, the rest of the environment is favorable for a tropical cyclone.\u00a0 The Sea Surface Temperature off the east coast of Madagascar is near 28\u00b0C.\u00a0 The upper level winds are weak and there is little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 If the inner core of Tropical Cyclone Ava remains intact, then Ava could intensify again when the center moves back over the South Indian Ocean in a day or so.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Ava is moving around the western end of a subtropical ridge which is steering the tropical cyclone toward the west-southwest.\u00a0 Ava will start to move toward the south when it reaches the end of the ridge in a few hours.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Ava is forecast to move just inland of the east coast of Madagascar.\u00a0 Ava is forecast to move back off the coast in 24 to 36 hours.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Ava is capable of causing serious damage along the central east coast of Madagascar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Strong Tropical Cyclone Ava made landfall on the east coast of Madagascar near Toamasina on Friday.\u00a0 At 10:00 a.m. EDT on Friday the center of Tropical Cyclone Ava was located near 18.0\u00b0S and longitude 49.2\u00b0E which put it near Toamasina.\u00a0 Ava was moving toward the west-southwest at 7 m.p.h. (11 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":[48,2],"tags":[614,650,84,85,615,612,939,938],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5384"}],"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=5384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5385,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5384\/revisions\/5385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}