Tropical Storm Sarika

[Somerset Squall]

Invest 92W has acquired enough organisation to be designated a 25kt tropical depression by JTWC. The depression is moving out into the South China Sea away from the Philippines. 05W is currently tracking northwestwards along the southwestern periphery of a mid level steering ridge to the northeast. The depression is forecast to turn directly north as it rounds the western side of the ridge and eventually make landfall in southeastern China in about 60hrs time. 05W has good outflow towards the southwest, and poleward outflow is lacking due to the presence of a trough to the north. This trough is expected to be the main cause of slow and only modest intensification before landfall. 05W is expected to reach a peak intensity of 40kts prior to landfall.

[Cookie]

[Somerset Squall]

Convection has concentrated near 05W's LLC, and looks much better organised than this morning. As a result, sustained winds have risen to 35kts and the cyclone has been named Tropical Storm Sarika. The intensity outlook remains the same, but Sarika is expected to become a little stronger than originally forecast (now 45kt peak), as the system has reached TS strength 12hrs faster than expected. Overall, the environment is marginally conducive for modest intensification. On the one hand, shear is low and equatorward outflow good. In contrast, poleward outflow is pratically non-existant looking at latest water vapour imagery, due to persistant troughing to the north. With this in mind, strengthening will be slow so Sarika does not have enough time to become a potent cyclone, which is good news as Sarika seems land bound for China. The track forecast has not changed and Sarika has begun to track northwards west of Luzon as it moves round to the western periphery of a steering ridge anchored from Luzon northwards east of Taiwan.

EDIT: interesting to note but may not be significant (yet anyway); that the West Pacific season has got off to a fairly active start, especially in comparison to the record quiet season last year. Sarika is the fifth cyclone to form and it wasn't until mid-August last year that this occured.

Edited June 9, 2011 by Somerset Squall

[Cookie]

interesting point but the start of last season mate!

[onlyME]

Sarika Today-News

Tropical Storm (TS) 05w (Sarika), located approximately 160 nm east-southeast of Hong Kong, China, has tracked northward at 14 knots over the past six hours. Animated infrared (ir) satellite imagery shows a fully exposed low level circulation center 35nm to the northeast of the deep convection. The initial position was based on the IR imagery with high confidence. The initial intensity was based on a 996mb ship observation 40 nm away. Animated water vapor imagery shows a tropical upper tropospheric trough (tutt) located just north of the system is causing subsidence aloft and moderate northeasterly vertical wind shear (vws) of 25 to 30 knots. Ts Sarika is currently steering along the western periphery of a low- to mid- level subtropical steering ridge.

[Somerset Squall]

Sarika's intensity did not exceed 35kts prior to landfall east of Hong Kong. Sarika has now dissipated over land.

[Somerset Squall]

Sarika left 23 dead and a further 10 missing in China. Just goes to show that weak tropical cyclones can be killers too:

http://gamutnews.com/20110611/20483/tropical-storm-leaves-23-dead-10-missing.html