Tropical Cyclone Gaja made landfall on the coast of southern India just south of Nagappattinam on Thursday.\u00a0 At 4:00 p.m. EST on Thursday the center of Tropical Storm Gaja was located at latitude 10.5\u00b0N and longitude 79.7\u00b0E which put it about 10 miles (15 km) south of Nagappattinam, India.\u00a0 Gaja was moving toward the west-southwest at 11 m.p.h. (17 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 85 m.p.h. (135 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 100 m.p.h. (160 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 974 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Gaja strengthened rapidly into the equivalent of a hurricane\/typhoon while it approached the coast of Southern India.\u00a0 A small circular eye formed at the center of circulation.\u00a0 A ring of strong thunderstorms surrounded the eye and the strongest winds were occurring in that ring of storms.\u00a0 Several bands of showers and thunderstorms were revolving around the core of Tropical Cyclone Gaja.\u00a0 The circulation of Gaja was small, which allowed it to strengthen quickly before landfall.\u00a0 Winds to hurricane\/typhoon force only extended out about 10 miles (15 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force only extended out about 65 miles (105 km) from the center.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Gaja produced winds strong enough to cause damage in the area near Nagappattinam.\u00a0 Those winds could bring a storm surge of 5 to 8 feet (1.5 to 2.5 meters) near where the center made landfall.\u00a0 The small size of Tropical Cyclone Gaja and the fact it did not intensify until it neared the coast will limit the magnitude of the storm surge.\u00a0 Gaja is forecast to move westward across southern India.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Gaja will weaken when it moves inland but it will drop locally heavy rain over Tamil Nadu, Kerala and southern Karnataka.\u00a0 The heavy rain could cause flash flooding in those regions.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Gaja will weaken while it moves across southern India.\u00a0 The small size of the circulation and mountains in that area will contribute to a fairly rapid weakening.\u00a0 The circulation in the lower levels could be seriously disrupted when it moves over the mountains, but the circulation in the middle levels may persist.\u00a0 Some numerical models are forecasting that Tropical Cyclone Gaja could strengthen back into the equivalent of a tropical storm when it moves over the Arabian Sea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Gaja made landfall on the coast of southern India just south of Nagappattinam on Thursday.\u00a0 At 4:00 p.m. EST on Thursday the center of Tropical Storm Gaja was located at latitude 10.5\u00b0N and longitude 79.7\u00b0E which put it about 10 miles (15 km) south of Nagappattinam, India.\u00a0 Gaja was moving toward the west-southwest […]<\/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":[1362,57,135,1366,1360,56,1361,594,1368,1369,1370,592,1359],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7047"}],"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=7047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7048,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7047\/revisions\/7048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}