Tropical Cyclone Gaja formed over the Bay of Bengal on Sunday.\u00a0 At 4:00 p.m. EST on Sunday the center of Tropical Cyclone Gaja was located at latitude 12.9\u00b0N and longitude 86.7\u00b0E which put it about 500 miles (805 km) east of Chennai, India.\u00a0 Gaja was moving toward the west-southwest at 8 m.p.h. (13 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 40 m.p.h. (65 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 1002 mb.<\/p>\n
An area of low pressure moving over the Bay of Bengal strengthened on Sunday and the India Meteorological Department classified the system as Tropical Cyclone Gaja.\u00a0 The circulation around Tropical Cyclone Gaja is still organizing.\u00a0 There is a distinct low level center of circulation.\u00a0 A short band of thunderstorms is west and north of the center.\u00a0 Several other bands of showers and thunderstorms are developing in other parts of Tropical Cyclone Gaja.\u00a0 One stronger band is east of the center of circulation and another stronger band is southeast of the center.\u00a0 Storms near the center are beginning to generate upper level divergence which will pump mass away from the tropical cyclone.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Gaja will move through an environment somewhat favorable for intensification during the next 48 hours.\u00a0 Gaja will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 29\u00b0C.\u00a0 It will move south of an upper level ridge.\u00a0 The ridge will produce easterly winds which will blow toward the top of the circulation.\u00a0 The winds will cause some vertical wind shear, but the shear will not be strong enough to prevent intensification.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Gaja will intensify and it could be nearly equivalent to a hurricane\/typhoon in two or three days.<\/p>\n
The upper level ridge will steer Tropical Cyclone Gaja in a generally west-southwesterly direction.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Gaja will approach the coast of southern India in about 72 hours.\u00a0 Gaja could be nearly the equivalent of a hurricane\/typhoon at that time.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, over the South Indian Ocean Tropical Cyclone Alcide still was moving slowly east of the northern end of Madgascar and Tropical Cyclone Bouchra developed between Diego Garcia and Cocos Island.\u00a0 At 4:00 p.m. EST on Sunday the center of Tropical Cyclone Alcide was located at latitude 12.3\u00b0N and longitude 51.9\u00b0E which put it about 170 miles (275 km) east of Antisiranana, Madagascar.\u00a0 Alcide was moving toward the northwest at 4 m.p.h. (6 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 40 m.p.h. (65 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 997 mb.<\/p>\n
At 4:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday the center of Tropical Cyclone Bouchra was located at latitude 5.4\u00b0S and longitude 89.1\u00b0E which put it about 700 miles (1130 km) northwest of Cocos Island, Australia.\u00a0 Bouchra was moving toward the east at 2 m.p.h. (3 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 45 m.p.h. (75 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 60 m.p.h. (95 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 999 mb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Gaja formed over the Bay of Bengal on Sunday.\u00a0 At 4:00 p.m. EST on Sunday the center of Tropical Cyclone Gaja was located at latitude 12.9\u00b0N and longitude 86.7\u00b0E which put it about 500 miles (805 km) east of Chennai, India.\u00a0 Gaja was moving toward the west-southwest at 8 m.p.h. (13 km\/h).\u00a0 The […]<\/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":[614,1365,1362,1358,135,1364,1366,644,352,1360,56,1361,84,85,74,615,1357,1363,1359],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7026"}],"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=7026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7027,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7026\/revisions\/7027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}