After moving slowly westward across the Southwest Indian Ocean for the past few days, Tropical Cyclone Francisco redeveloped near the east coast of Madagascar on Thursday.\u00a0 At 7:00 a.m. EST on Thursday the center of Tropical Cyclone Francisco was located at latitude 17.9\u00b0S and longitude 50.7\u00b0E which put it about 90 miles (145 km) east of Toamasina, Madagascar.\u00a0 Francisco was moving toward the west at 6 m.p.h. (9 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 1004 mb.<\/p>\n
Strong vertical wind shear weakened Tropical Cyclone Francisco east of Rodrigues last Thursday, but the lower portion of the circulation remained intact.\u00a0 The lower level circulation drifted slowly westward during the last seven days and it moved across Mauritius and La Reunion earlier the week.\u00a0 More thunderstorms began to develop around the lower level circulation on Wednesday, when it moved closer to the east coast of Madagascar.\u00a0 Bands of showers and thunderstorms began to reform.\u00a0 Storms near the center of circulation started generating upper level divergence which pumped mass away from the tropical cyclone.\u00a0 The removal of mass allowed the surface pressure to decrease and the wind speeds began to increase.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Francisco has exhibited greater organization in recent hours.\u00a0 However, the distribution of thunderstorms was asymmetrical.\u00a0 Many of the stronger thunderstorms were occurring in bands in the western half of the circulation.\u00a0 Bands in the eastern half of the circulation consisted primarily of showers and lower clouds.\u00a0 Francisco was moving under the northern part of an upper level ridge.\u00a0 The ridge was producing easterly winds which were blowing toward the top of the circulation.\u00a0 Those winds were causing some vertical wind shear and the shear could be responsible for the asymmetrical distribution of thunderstorms.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Francisco will move through an environment favorable for intensification during the next 6 to 12 hours.\u00a0 Francisco will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 28\u00b0C.\u00a0 The upper level ridge will still cause vertical wind shear, but the shear will not be strong enough to prevent intensification.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Francisco will weaken when it moves over Madagascar.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Francisco will move north of a high pressure system over the Southwest Indian Ocean.\u00a0 The high will steer Francisco toward the west.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Francisco could make landfall on the east coast of Madagascar in about 12 hours.\u00a0 Francisco will drop locally heavy rain over parts of central Madagascar.\u00a0 The heavy rain could cause flash floods in some locations,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After moving slowly westward across the Southwest Indian Ocean for the past few days, Tropical Cyclone Francisco redeveloped near the east coast of Madagascar on Thursday.\u00a0 At 7:00 a.m. EST on Thursday the center of Tropical Cyclone Francisco was located at latitude 17.9\u00b0S and longitude 50.7\u00b0E which put it about 90 miles (145 km) east […]<\/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":[647,1565,84,85,74,1439,648,939,1929],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9246"}],"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=9246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9247,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9246\/revisions\/9247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}