Tropical Storm Tapah developed east of Taiwan on Thursday.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Storm Tapah was located at latitude 23.3\u00b0N and longitude 126.5\u00b0E which put it about 150 miles (245 km) east-southeast of Ishigaki, Japan.\u00a0 Tapah was moving toward the west at 7 m.p.h. (11 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h) and there were gusts to 65 m.p.h. (105 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 965 mb.<\/p>\n
A distinct low level center of circulation formed on the northern side of an area of thunderstorms east of Taiwan on Thursday and the Japan Meteorological Agency designated the system as Tropical Storm Tapah.\u00a0 The distribution of thunderstorms around Tapah was asymmetrical.\u00a0 Most of the thunderstorms\u00a0 were occurring in bands in the southern half of the circulation.\u00a0 Bands in the northern half of the tropical storm consisted primarily of showers and lower clouds.\u00a0 Storm on the southern side of the center began to generate upper level divergence which pumped mass away from the tropical storm.\u00a0 The circulation around Tropical Storm Tapah was very large.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out about 250 miles (400 km) from the center of circulation.<\/p>\n
Tropical Storm Tapah will move through an environment favorable for intensification during the next several days.\u00a0 Tapah will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 29\u00b0C.\u00a0 It will move through a region where the upper level winds are weak and there will be little vertical wind shear.\u00a0 Some drier air north of Tropical Storm Tapah could inhibit the development of bands of thunderstorms on the northern side of the circulation.\u00a0 Tropical Storm Tapah is likely to intensify and it could strengthen into a typhoon during the weekend.<\/p>\n
Tropical Storm Tapah will move around the western end of a subtropical ridge over the Western North Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 The ridge will steer Tapah more toward the northwest on Friday.\u00a0 Tapah will move more toward the north when it rounds the western end of the ridge.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Storm Tapah could move over the southern Ryukyu Islands in about 12 hours.\u00a0 The center of Tapah could pass west of Okinawa in about 24 hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Storm Tapah developed east of Taiwan on Thursday.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday the center of Tropical Storm Tapah was located at latitude 23.3\u00b0N and longitude 126.5\u00b0E which put it about 150 miles (245 km) east-southeast of Ishigaki, Japan.\u00a0 Tapah was moving toward the west at 7 m.p.h. (11 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained […]<\/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":[166,1080,44,46,194,42,1696,1695,167],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8442"}],"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=8442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8443,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8442\/revisions\/8443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}