Major Tropical Cyclone Harold neared Vanuatu on Saturday night.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Tropical Cyclone Vanuatu was located at latitude 15.5\u00b0S and longitude 166.0\u00b0E which put it about 80 miles (130 km) west-northwest of Unmet, Vanuatu.\u00a0 Harold was moving toward the southeast at 7 m.p.h. (11 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 120 m.p.h. (195 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 150 m.p.h. (240 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 949 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Harold intensified into the equivalent of a major hurricane.\u00a0 The original small eye dissipated but a new larger eye developed on Saturday night.\u00a0 The new eye was surround by a ring of strong thunderstorms and the strongest winds were occurring in that ring of storms.\u00a0 Bands of showers and thunderstorms were revolving around the core of Tropical Cyclone Harold.\u00a0 The strongest rainbands were in the eastern and southern parts of the circulation.\u00a0 Storms near the core of Harold generated upper level divergence which pumped mass away from the center of the tropical cyclone.<\/p>\n
Winds to hurricane\/typhoon force extended out 30 miles (50 km) from the center of Tropical Cyclone Harold.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out 125 miles (200 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) for Harold was 22.1.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) was 11.1 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) was 33.2.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Harold was capable of causing major damage.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Harold will move through an environment favorable for intensification during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 Harold will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 It will move around the southwestern part 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 circulation.\u00a0 Those winds will cause some vertical wind shear and the wind shear could be strong enough to limit intensification.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Harold could intensify further, but it may maintain its intensity on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The ridge over the South Pacific Ocean will steer Tropical Cyclone Harold slowly toward the southeast during the next 24 hours.\u00a0 On its anticipated track the core of Harold with the strongest winds will move slowly toward Malekula.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Harold will drop heavy rain over central Vanuatu.\u00a0 The slow movement of Harold could create the potential for very serious flooding on Espiritu Santo, Malekula, Ambrym and Epi.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in the tropics, Tropical Cyclone Irondro began to slowly weaken over the South Indian Ocean.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Tropical Cyclone Irondro was located at latitude 23.3\u00b0S and longitude 81.5\u00b0E which put it about 1275 miles (2060 km) southwest of Cocos Island.\u00a0 Irondro was moving toward the southeast at 18 m.p.h. (29 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 110 m.p.h. (175 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 130 m.p.h. (210 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 958 mb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Major Tropical Cyclone Harold neared Vanuatu on Saturday night.\u00a0 At 11:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday the center of Tropical Cyclone Vanuatu was located at latitude 15.5\u00b0S and longitude 166.0\u00b0E which put it about 80 miles (130 km) west-northwest of Unmet, Vanuatu.\u00a0 Harold was moving toward the southeast 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":[48,76,2],"tags":[1485,1981,1991,644,1992,1988,1980,650,1978,1989,1486,1490,1979,1977,1990,90],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9385"}],"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=9385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9386,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9385\/revisions\/9386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}