Tropical Cyclone Sarai moved toward Tonga on Sunday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Sunday the center of Tropical Cyclone Sarai was located at latitude 20.7\u00b0S and longitude 178.3\u00b0E which put it about 220 miles (355 km) west of Nuku Alofa, Tonga.\u00a0 Sarai was moving toward the east-southeast at 4 m.p.h. (6 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 65 m.p.h. (105 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 80 m.p.h. (130 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 985 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Sarai weakened on Sunday.\u00a0 An upper level ridge north of Sarai produced strong westerly winds which blew toward the top of the circulation.\u00a0 Those winds caused strong vertical wind shear which disturbed the circulation around Tropical Cyclone Sarai.\u00a0 The inner core became less well organized and there was no evidence of an eye on satellite images.\u00a0 The stronger thunderstorms were occurring in bands in the eastern half of the circulation.\u00a0 Bands in the western half of the circulation consisted primarily of showers and lower clouds.\u00a0 The circulation around Tropical Cyclone Sarai was still large.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out 200 miles (320 km) from the center of circulation.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Sarai will continue to move through an environment unfavorable for intensification during the next several days.\u00a0 Sarai will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 28\u00b0C.\u00a0 However, the upper level ridge will continue to produce strong westerly winds and vertical wind shear is likely to cause Tropical Cyclone Sarai to weaken further.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Sarai will move south of a subtropical high pressure system over the South Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 The high pressure system will steer Sarai toward the east during the next several days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Sarai will move across Tonga in about 24 hours.\u00a0 Although Sarai will weaken, it will bring winds to tropical storm force and heavy rain to parts of Tonga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Sarai moved toward Tonga on Sunday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Sunday the center of Tropical Cyclone Sarai was located at latitude 20.7\u00b0S and longitude 178.3\u00b0E which put it about 220 miles (355 km) west of Nuku Alofa, Tonga.\u00a0 Sarai was moving toward the east-southeast at 4 m.p.h. (6 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":[76,2],"tags":[619,1886,1878,620,307,1877],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9085"}],"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=9085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9086,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9085\/revisions\/9086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}