Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Following Faxai, tropics heat up again in the West Pacific

By Brian Thompson, AccuWeather meteorologist



As Faxai exits off to the northeast after pummeling Japan, the Western Pacific basin will be heating up again over the next week with the potential for a few tropical systems to develop.
The most immediate concern is a tropical depression that has formed between Guam and the Philippines. The tropical depression is forecast to develop into Tropical Storm Peipah by Thursday evening, local time.
A tropical depression between Guam and the Philippines will slowly drift to the northwest over the next several days.
While the depression will move steadily to the northwest through Friday, the forces that are working to steer the system will become very weak over the coming days, which will lead to the depression slowing to a crawl and even stalling to the south of the Ryukyu Islands heading into the weekend.
By next week, it is expected that the system will start moving again and could impact areas anywhere from southern Japan to Taiwan or China next week.
"Because of the way the steering flow will vary, there is a pretty wide zone of potential of places this could go, spanning the area from the northernmost part of Luzon in the Philippines to Taiwan, the southern Ryukyu Islands of Japan and westward into eastern China," said AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dave Houk.
The area that will be potentially impacted by the storm over the coming days will become clearer as the weekend approaches.
"If we had to favor part of this area over another right now, it would be the northern half from northern Taiwan through China and the Ryukyu Islands, which also will allow more room for potential strengthening and a greater potential to threaten life and property," Houk added.
There are other areas where we could see a couple of other areas of interest across the basin over the next week or so. One of those will likely spawn just to the northeast of the aforementioned tropical system sometime over the weekend.
If this system does develop, it will drift to the north and then eventually turn more to the northeast. This track could mean a close brush with Japan around Monday of next week.
The highest risk area for impacts will be along the east coast of Honshu, including the Tokyo area, which was hit hard by Faxai. While this storm is not expected to reach the intensity of Faxai, it will not help with ongoing cleanup efforts.
AccuWeather meteorologists are also monitoring another disturbance of interest that will have the potential to develop into a tropical storm before threatening Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands early next week.
From that point, the already strengthening system will have the potential to become a dangerous typhoon as it moves to the northwest next week, according to Houk. That being said, any impacts to eastern Asia, Taiwan or Japan would not come until late next weekend at the earliest.

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