View across the Outer Harbour of Stornoway

Friday 12 March 2010

Hurricane update - 12 March

The South Pacific has come to life with two tropical cyclones in relative proximity to each other.

Tomas is brewing up to the east of American Samoa and will be carrying sustained winds of 110 knots (that's a trifling 125 mph) as it ploughs through the entire Fijian archipelago on Sunday GMT. Fiji is 12 hours ahead of GMT, hence my addition of the timezone. Since midnight, I have received nearly 600 visitors to my tropical cyclones blog half of whom came from Fiji. They have every reason to be concerned: Tomas will be equivalent to a category III hurricane on the Saffir Simpson scale. Those readers who are in Hurricane Alley in the States will know what damage that does.

Vanuatu is at the back end of tropical cyclone 20P, to be named Vania, which is moving west into the Coral Sea to the north of New Caledonia. The storm will intensify to the equivalent of a category IV hurricane - far away from land. As yet. Vanuatu lies about 1100 miles northeast of Brisbane, Australia.

The tropical cyclone in the South Atlantic looks decidedly unhealthy on this morning's satellite imagery. It is lying 900 miles to the east of Montevideo in Uruguay and will disappear as a tropical cyclone fairly soon.

3 comments:

  1. I wonder if the young 16 year old sailor, Abby Sunderland, is sailing into those storms Gido?
    She is hoping to become the youngest ever to circumnavigate the world and I am following her Blog.
    May God bless those in the eye of these storms.
    Jeanie

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  2. No Jeanie, Abby is thousands of miles away to the east. Thanks for the pointer, will follow her journey.

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  3. That's good Guido. Thanks for the reply. I hope she is able to avoid any of the big storms at sea.
    Jeanie

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