In the Western Pacific,
Typhoon Neoguri
has strengthened into a dangerous Category 4 storm with 140 mph winds
this Sunday morning, and is headed west-northwest at 12 mph towards a
Tuesday brush with Okinawa in Japan's Ryukyu island chain.
Satellite images show a huge and well-organized system, with a prominent eye, and very intense eyewall thunderstorms with cold cloud tops.
WInd shear
is light, 5 - 10 knots, sea surface temperatures are a very warm 30 -
31°C, and very warm waters extend to great depth along the storm's path,
giving the typhoon plenty of heat energy to power potential
intensification into a Category 5 Super Typhoon. The 00Z Sunday runs of
our two top track models, the GFS and European models, showed Neoguri
passing about 50 - 100 miles south of Okinawa near 00 UTC Tuesday.
Okinawa will be in the right front quadrant of Neoguri, but if the
present track forecast holds, the top winds on the south end of the
island will be barely hurricane force, 70 - 75 mph. The ocean is very
deep offshore of Okinawa, which will allow huge waves to crash against
the coast. Shortly after passing Okinawa, Neoguri will get caught by a
trough of low pressure and begin curving to the north, and likely hit
the Japanese island of Kyushu, where the city of Nagasaki lies, between
12 - 22 UTC on Wednesday. Although ocean temperatures will cool and wind
shear will rise as Neoguri approaches Japan, weakening the storm, the
typhoon is so large and powerful that it will likely make landfall at
Category 2 or 3 strength, causing major damage in Japan. Neoguri is the
7th named storm and 3rd typhoon of the 2014 Western Pacific typhoon
season. The other two typhoons of 2014--Typhoon Faxai and Typhoon
Tapah--were both Category 1 storms. Neoguri is named after the Korean
word for raccoon dog.
Figure 1. NASA astronaut
Reid Wiseman
tweeted this photo of Typhoon Neoguri from the International Space
Station at 7 pm EDT July 5, 2014. At the time, Neoguri was a Category 4
typhoon with 140 mph winds.
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