TS Banyan Moves Around Wake Island (Credit: NRL Monterey and JTWC)

DISCUSSION: The top figure (courtesy of the Joint Typhoon Warning Center [JTWC])shows the previous and forecast positions of TS Banyan in the West Pacific.  The storm moved just to the southwest and west of Wake Island and is expected to move northward and eventually turn toward the northeast as it moves into the mid-latitudes.  Fortunately for Wake Island, the storm is pretty compact with its strongest winds and heaviest rains not extending very far from the storm center.  The second figure above shows the rainfall associated with the storm retrieved from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (color) and IR brightness temperatures (grayscale) from the Himawari-8 satellite (courtesy Naval Research Laboratory [NRL] Monterey) valid around 07Z 12 August 2017.  The heaviest rainfall is clearly concentrated around the storm center.  In the near term, the storm is expected to intensify into a typhoon as it moves over warm water and experiences a healthy upper-level outflow.  However, no landmasses lay near the forecast track of Banyan over the next 5 days.

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©2017 Meteorologist Dr. Ken Leppert II