Tropical Cyclone Wasi developed near Samoa on Friday night.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Friday the center of Tropical Cyclone Wasi was located at latitude 13.6\u00b0S and longitude 172.9\u00b0W which put it about 20 miles (35 km) west of Falealupo, Samoa and about 185 miles (300 km) west-northwest of Pago Pago, American Samoa.\u00a0 Wasi was moving toward the southeast at 11 m.p.h. (17 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 50 m.p.h. (80 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 65 m.p.h. (105 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 993 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Wasi spun up out of the same elongated trough of low pressure near Samoa that produced Tropical Cyclone Vicky on Thursday.\u00a0 A small center of low pressure developed west-northwest of Samoa on Friday.\u00a0 More thunderstorms formed near the center of circulation and the system was classified as Tropical Cyclone Wasi.\u00a0 Microwave satellite imagery indicated that there was a tight inner core in the tropical cyclone.\u00a0 Storms near the core were generating upper level divergence which was pumping mass away from Tropical Cyclone Wasi.\u00a0 The circulation around Wasi was even smaller than the circulation around Tropical Cyclone Vicky.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force only extended out about 50 miles (80 km) from the center of Tropical Cyclone Wasi.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Wasi will move into an environment somewhat favorable for intensification during the next 24 to 36 hours.\u00a0 Wasi will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 28\u00b0C.\u00a0 It will move under the western end of an upper level ridge over the South Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 The ridge will produce northwesterly winds which will blow toward the top of the tropical cyclone.\u00a0 Those winds will cause moderate vertical wind shear, but the winds may not be strong enough to prevent intensification.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Wasi could strengthen during the next 24 to 36 hours.\u00a0 Since the circulation around Wasi is so small, if the tropical cyclone moves into an area where the upper level winds are stronger, it could weaken quickly.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Wasi will move around the western end of a high pressure system over the South Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 The high will steer Wasi toward the southeast during the next 12 hours.\u00a0 Wasi will move more toward the south later in the weekend.\u00a0 On its anticipated track Tropical Cyclone Wasi will bring gust winds and locally heavy rain to portions of Samoa during the next 24 hours.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere over the South Pacific Ocean, Tropical Cyclone Vicky weakened as it passed near Niue on Friday.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Friday the center of Tropical Cyclone Vicky was located at latitude 19.7\u00b0S and longitude 168.7\u00b0W which put oit about 95 miles (150 km) southeast of Niue.\u00a0 Vicky was moving toward the south-southeast at 13 m.p.h. (20 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 35 m.p.h. (55 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 45 m.p.h. (75 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 1001 mb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Wasi developed near Samoa on Friday night.\u00a0 At 10:00 p.m. EST on Friday the center of Tropical Cyclone Wasi was located at latitude 13.6\u00b0S and longitude 172.9\u00b0W which put it about 20 miles (35 km) west of Falealupo, Samoa and about 185 miles (300 km) west-northwest of Pago Pago, American Samoa.\u00a0 Wasi was […]<\/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":[990,347,1952,306,957,301,673,348,1948,1950,1949,1951],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9270"}],"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=9270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9271,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9270\/revisions\/9271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}