Tropical Cyclone Harold battered Espiritu Santo on Sunday.\u00a0 The eye of Harold moved over the southwestern part of Espiritu Santo.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday the center of Tropical Cyclone Harold was located at latitude 15.3\u00b0S and longitude 166.4\u00b0E which put it about 60 miles west-northwest of Luganville, Vanuatu.\u00a0 Harold was moving toward the east at 7 m.p.h. (11 km\/h).\u00a0 The maximum sustained wind speed was 145 m.p.h. (230 km\/h) and there were wind gusts to 175 m.p.h. (280 km\/h).\u00a0 The minimum surface pressure was 929 mb.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Harold strengthened on Sunday as it slowly approached northern Vanuatu.\u00a0 A circular eye with a diameter of 18 miles (29 km) was evident on satellite images.\u00a0 The eye was surrounded 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 Harold.\u00a0 Storms near the core were generating strong upper level divergence which was pumping mass away from the tropical cyclone.<\/p>\n
Winds to hurricane\/typhoon force extended out 45 miles (75 km) from the center of Tropical Cyclone Harold.\u00a0 Winds to tropical storm force extended out 120 miles (195 km) from the center of circulation.\u00a0 The Hurricane Intensity Index (HII) for Tropical Cyclone Harold was 29.9.\u00a0 The Hurricane Size Index (HSI) was 13.3 and the Hurricane Wind Intensity Size Index (HWISI) 43.2.\u00a0 Harold was capable of causing significant damage.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Harold will move around the southwestern part of a high pressure system over the South Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 The high will steer Harold toward the east-southeast during the next few days.\u00a0 On its anticipated track the center of Tropical Cyclone Harold will move across the southern end of Espiritu Santo.\u00a0 The center will also pass near the northern end of Malekula, near the southern end of Pentecost and near Ambrym.\u00a0 Tropical Cyclone Harold will drop heavy rain over Espiritu Santo, Malekula, Pentecost, Ambrym, Epi, Ambae and Maewo.\u00a0 Harold will move slowly and the heavy rain is likely to cause flash floods.\u00a0 Strong winds blowing toward the coast could produce significant storm surges on the eastern and northern coasts of some islands.<\/p>\n
Tropical Cyclone Harold will move through an environment favorable for a strong tropical cyclone.\u00a0 Harold will move over water where the Sea Surface Temperature is near 30\u00b0C.\u00a0 It will move under 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.\u00a0 Since the core of Tropical Cyclone Harold will pass over the southern end of Espiritu Santo, increased friction will cause the circulation to weaken during the next 12 to 24 hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tropical Cyclone Harold battered Espiritu Santo on Sunday.\u00a0 The eye of Harold moved over the southwestern part of Espiritu Santo.\u00a0 At 5:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday the center of Tropical Cyclone Harold was located at latitude 15.3\u00b0S and longitude 166.4\u00b0E which put it about 60 miles west-northwest of Luganville, Vanuatu.\u00a0 Harold was moving toward 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":[1981,1995,1991,1992,1988,1980,650,1993,1996,1989,1994,1490,1979,90],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9390"}],"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=9390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9391,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9390\/revisions\/9391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jayhobgood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}