Tropical Cyclone Hola brought strong winds and heavy rain to Vanuatu on Wednesday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday the center of Tropical Cyclone Hola was located at latitude 17.4\u00b0S and longitude 165.5\u00b0E\u00a0 which put it about 180 miles (290 km) west of Port Vila, Vanuatu.\u00a0 Hola 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.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Hola intensified rapidly into the equivalent of a hurricane\/typhoon on Wednesday.\u00a0 A very small circular eye developed at the center of circulation.\u00a0 A ring of strong thunderstorms formed around the eye and the strongest winds were occurring in that ring of storms.\u00a0 Rainbands were revolving around the core of the Tropical Cyclone Hola.\u00a0 The strongest rainbands were occurring in the eastern side of the circulation.\u00a0 The rainbands were weaker in the western half of Hola.\u00a0 Storms around the core of the circulation were generating strong upper level divergence which was pumping mass away to the east of the tropical cyclone.\u00a0 The circulation of Tropical Cyclone Hola was fairly small.\u00a0 Winds to hurricane\/typhoon force extended out about 30 miles (50 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out about 120 miles (195 km) from the center.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Hola will move through an environment favorable for intensification for another 24 to 36 hours.\u00a0 Hola will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 It is moving under a region where the upper level winds are weak and there is little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Hola is likely to intensify during the next 24 hours and it could become the equivalent of a major hurricane.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Hola was moving around the northwestern end of a subtropical ridge which was steering the tropical cyclone toward the west-northwest.\u00a0 Hola is forecast to turn more toward the south when it rounds the end of the ridge on Thursday.\u00a0 It could move toward the southeast when it moves farther south.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Hola could approach New Caledonia and the Iles Loyaute in a little over 24 hours.<\/p>\n
Rainbands in the eastern half of Tropical Cyclone Hola brought gusty winds and locally heavy rain to parts of Vanuatu on Wednesday.\u00a0 Wind and rain could increase over New Caledonia and the Iles Loyaute by Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Hola brought strong winds and heavy rain to Vanuatu on Wednesday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday the center of Tropical Cyclone Hola was located at latitude 17.4\u00b0S and longitude 165.5\u00b0E\u00a0 which put it about 180 miles (290 km) west of Port Vila, Vanuatu.\u00a0 Hola was moving toward the west-southwest at 7 m.p.h. […]<\/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":[337,79,965,88,92,339,967,966,90],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5607"}],"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=5607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5608,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5607\/revisions\/5608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}