Tropical Cyclone Idai rapidly intensified into the equivalent of a hurricane\/typhoon over the Mozambique Channel on Sunday.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday the center of Tropical Cyclone Idai was located at latitude 17.4\u00b0S and longitude 43.2\u00b0E which put it about 75 miles (120 km) northwest of Maintirano, Madagascar.\u00a0 Idai was moving toward the south at 1 m.p.h. (2 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 105 m.p.h. (170 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 125 m.p.h. (205 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 958 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Idai intensified rapidly on Sunday.\u00a0 An eye was apparent on satellite imagery,\u00a0 A ring of strong thunderstorms surrounded the eye and the strongest winds were occurring in that ring of storms.\u00a0 Bands of showers and thunderstorms were revolving around the core of Idai.\u00a0 Storms near the core were generating upper level divergence which was pumping mass away from the tropical cyclone.\u00a0 Winds to hurricane\/typhoon force extended out about 25 miles (40 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out about 100 miles (160 km) from the center.<\/p>\n
The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) for Tropical Cyclone Idai was 17.8.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) was 10.7 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) was 28.5.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Idai will continue to move through an environment favorable for intensification during the next day or two,\u00a0 Idai 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 Tropical Cyclone Idai could intensify into the equivalent of a major hurricane during the next 24 hours.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Idai will move around the eastern end of a subtropical ridge over southern Africa. The ridge will steer Idai toward the west during the next several days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Idai could approach the coast of Mozambique in about four days.\u00a0 Idai could be the equivalent of a major hurricane at that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Idai rapidly intensified into the equivalent of a hurricane\/typhoon over the Mozambique Channel on Sunday.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday the center of Tropical Cyclone Idai was located at latitude 17.4\u00b0S and longitude 43.2\u00b0E which put it about 75 miles (120 km) northwest of Maintirano, Madagascar.\u00a0 Idai was moving toward the south […]<\/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":[1455,650,1454,85,86,1456,348,1453],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7512"}],"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=7512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7513,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7512\/revisions\/7513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}