Dangerous Typhoon Mangkhut approached northern Luzon on Thursday night.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Typhoon Mangkhut was located at latitude 16.2\u00b0N and longitude 126.2\u00b0E which put it about 400 miles (645 km) east-northeast of Manila.\u00a0 Mangkhut was moving toward the northwest at 14 m.p.h.\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 170 m.p.h. (280 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 205 m.p.h. (335 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 905 mb.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Mangkhut has a large powerful circulation.\u00a0 There is a circular eye with a diameter of about 30 miles (50 km) at the center of circulation.\u00a0 A number of bands of showers and thunderstorms are revolving around the core of the circulation.\u00a0 Storms around the core were generating strong upper level divergence which was pumping mass away from the typhoon in all directions.<\/p>\n
Winds to typhoon force extended out about 100 miles (160 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out about 265 miles (425 km) from the center.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) for Typhoon Mangkhut was 38.5.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) was 33.7 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) was 72.2.\u00a0 Those indices indicate that Typhoon Mangkhut is very similar in size and strength to what Hurricane Katrina was when Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico in 2005.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Mangkhut will move through an environment that is very favorable for strong typhoons during the next 12 to 18 hours.\u00a0 Mangkhut will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 It will move through an area where there will be little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 It is difficult for a typhoon or hurricane to continue to generate enough upper level divergence to stay extremely strong for a long period of time.\u00a0 However, Typhoon Mangkhut could remain the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale until it reaches northern Luzon.\u00a0 Mangkhut will weaken when the center moves over northern Luzon.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Mangkhut is moving south of a subtropical ridge over the Western North Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 The ridge is steering Mangkhut toward the northwest and that general motion is forecast to continue.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Typhoon Mangkhut will reach northern Luzon east of Tuguegarao in about 18 hours.\u00a0 Mangkhut is capable of causing extensive catastrophic damage.\u00a0 It will produce extremely strong winds over northern Luzon.\u00a0 There will be a significant storm surge at the coast.\u00a0 Locally heavy rain will cause flash floods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dangerous Typhoon Mangkhut approached northern Luzon on Thursday night.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Typhoon Mangkhut was located at latitude 16.2\u00b0N and longitude 126.2\u00b0E which put it about 400 miles (645 km) east-northeast of Manila.\u00a0 Mangkhut was moving toward the northwest at 14 m.p.h.\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 170 […]<\/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":[563,43,127,650,103,1229,42,96,1256,63,1056,564],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6639"}],"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=6639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6640,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6639\/revisions\/6640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}