Typhoon Kong-rey quickly strengthened into the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale on Monday.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Monday the center of Typhoon Kong-rey was located at latitude 17.9\u00b0N and longitude 137.3\u00b0E which put it about 690 miles (1110 km) southeast of Okinawa.\u00a0 Kong-rey was moving toward the west-northwest at 11 m.p.h. (17 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 160 m.p.h. (260 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 195 m.p.h. (315 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 910 mb.<\/p>\n
The circulation of Typhoon Kong-rey was very organized and symmetrical.\u00a0 There was a circular eye at the center of Kong-rey.\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 Typhoon Kong-rey.\u00a0 Storms near the core were generating strong upper level divergence which was pumping mass away from the typhoon in all directions.<\/p>\n
Kong-rey is a large typhoon.\u00a0 Winds to typhoon force extend out about 75 miles (120 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extend out about 240 miles (390 km) from the center.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) for Typhoon Kong-rey is 35.0.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) is 26.8 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) is 61.8.\u00a0 Typhoon Kong-rey is capable of causing widespread catastrophic damage.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Kong-rey will remain in an environment very favorable for strong typhoons for another 24 to 36 hours.\u00a0 Kong-rey will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 It will move through a region where the upper level winds are weak and there will be little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 If a rainband wraps around the existing eye and eyewall, then an eyewall replacement cycle could cause Typhoon Kong-rey to weaken.\u00a0 An upper level trough near Taiwan will produce southwesterly winds which will cause the vertical wind shear to increase in a couple of days.\u00a0 Kong-rey will weaken more steadily when the wind shear increases.<\/p>\n
Typhoon Kong-rey will move around the western end of a subtropical high pressure system over the Western North Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 The high will steer Kong-rey toward the northwest for several more days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Typhoon Kong-rey could approach the Rykyu Islands in 48 to 60 hours.\u00a0 It will still be a typhoon at that time.\u00a0 If Typhoon Kong-rey brings strong winds and heavy rain, it will hamper the recovery from Typhoon Trami which hit the Ryukyu Islands a few days ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Typhoon Kong-rey quickly strengthened into the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale on Monday.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Monday the center of Typhoon Kong-rey was located at latitude 17.9\u00b0N and longitude 137.3\u00b0E which put it about 690 miles (1110 km) southeast of Okinawa.\u00a0 Kong-rey was moving toward the west-northwest at […]<\/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":[601,43,650,44,1291,46,194,130,42,1297,602],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6769"}],"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=6769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6770,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6769\/revisions\/6770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}