A weakened Tropical Cyclone Sarai moved across Tonga on Monday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Monday the center of Tropical Cyclone Sarai was located at latitude 20.6\u00b0S and longitude 174.9\u00b0W which put it about 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Nuku Alofa, Tonga.\u00a0 Sarai was moving toward the northeast at 8 m.p.h. (13 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 989 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Sarai moved south of an upper level ridge on Monday.\u00a0 The upper level ridge produced strong westerly winds which blew across the top of Sarai.\u00a0 Those winds caused strong vertical wind shear and they blew the tops off of thunderstorms in Tropical Cyclone Sarai.\u00a0 The circulation in the lower levels of Sarai remained intact, but it consisted of showers and lower clouds.\u00a0 The wind speed gradually decreased during Monday.<\/p>\n
The center of Tropical Cyclone Sarai passed just north of the Tongatapu Group of islands.\u00a0 Sarai passed over the Ha’apai Group of islands.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Sarai brought winds to tropical storm force and squally weather to parts of Tonga.\u00a0 Rainfall amounts were relatively light because the wind sheared the tops off of any thunderstorms which started to form.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Sarai will move through an environment unfavorable for intensification.\u00a0 Sarai will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 27\u00b0C.\u00a0 The upper level ridge will continue to cause strong vertical winds shear.\u00a0 The wind shear will make it very difficult for new thunderstorms to form.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Sarai is likely to weaken slowly as the circulation in the lower levels spins down.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Sarai will move south of a subtropical high pressure system over the South Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 The high will steer Sarai toward the east during the next several days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Sarai will move south of the Vava’u Group of Islands during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 Sarai could reach Niue in less than 30 hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A weakened Tropical Cyclone Sarai moved across Tonga on Monday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Monday the center of Tropical Cyclone Sarai was located at latitude 20.6\u00b0S and longitude 174.9\u00b0W which put it about 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Nuku Alofa, Tonga.\u00a0 Sarai was moving toward the northeast 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":[76,2],"tags":[1879,1888,306,1886,1878,620,307,1887,1877,1889],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9092"}],"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=9092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9093,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9092\/revisions\/9093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}