Powerful Typhoon Maria spun east of Taiwan on Saturday.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Typhoon Maria was located at latitude 19.4\u00b0N and longitude 138.3\u00b0E which put it about 950 miles (1530 km) east-southeast of Okinawa.\u00a0 Maria was moving toward the northwest at 13 m.p.h. (10 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 150 m.p.h. (240 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 185 m.p.h. (295 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 925 mb.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Maria appeared to complete an eyewall replacement cycle on Saturday.\u00a0 The completion of the cycle resulted in a\u00a0 larger circulation. \u00a0 There was an eye which had a diameter of 24 miles (38 km).\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 The rainbands northwest in the northwestern quadrant of Typhoon Maria were a little weaker than the bands in the other parts of the circulation.\u00a0 Storms in the core of Maria were generating upper level divergence which was pumping mass away to the northeast of the typhoon.<\/p>\n
Winds to typhoon force extended out about 70 miles (110 km\/h) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out about 200 miles (320 km) from the center.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) for Maria was 37.9.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) was 24.5 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) was 62.4.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Maria will move through an environment mostly favorable for powerful typhoons on Sunday.\u00a0\u00a0 Maria will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 It will move through an environment where the upper level winds are weak and there will be little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 There appears to be some sinking motion and drier air northwest of Maria and that may be the reason why the rainbands were weaker in that part of the typhoon.\u00a0 The drier air could inhibit further strengthening.\u00a0 Typhoon Maria is likely to remain strong for another 24 to 48 hours.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Maria was moving around the southern portion of a subtropical ridge over the Western North Pacific.\u00a0 The ridge was steering Maria toward the northwest.\u00a0 The ridge is forecast to strengthen and it will steer Typhoon Maria more toward the west-northwest.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Typhoon Maria could approach the southern Ryukyu Islands in about 48 hours.\u00a0 Maria could be near the northern end of Taiwan in about 60 hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Powerful Typhoon Maria spun east of Taiwan on Saturday.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Typhoon Maria was located at latitude 19.4\u00b0N and longitude 138.3\u00b0E which put it about 950 miles (1530 km) east-southeast of Okinawa.\u00a0 Maria was moving toward the northwest at 13 m.p.h. (10 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[472,43,650,107,44,46,194,130,42,96,1069,1056,473],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6154"}],"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=6154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6155,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6154\/revisions\/6155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}