WesternPacificWeather.com

The rainy season front dominates southern China through southern Japan while the tropics remain warm but not much going on in the form of organized storm systems.

NORTH

High Pressure is dominating North East China ushering in southerly winds and warm temperatures for the regions. Beijing is looking at temperatures nearly 10C above the average for this time of year.  Further east though the Korean Pennisula and Northern Japan is seeing clearer skies today but it is coming along with dust from the west out of the Gobi desert. Wide spread “yellow sand” observations are being seen across the region leading to itchy eyes and poor air quality for many.

Yellow Sand Dominates Japan

Things could change up by mid-week though with a developing storm system to the south pushing north, wide spread rain on Thursday and Friday is expected for Korea and Japan along with cooler temperatures.

CENTRAL

The rainy season front dominates south east China through Taiwan and southern Japan.  China has been getting the bulk of this with the chance of flooding south of the Yangzi river, but the biggest threat is in Kyushu where short time heavy rainfall could trigger additional landslides in some of the earthquake hit regions.

Southern Kyushu including Kumamoto could see up to 120mm of rain in the next 24hrs. Remember that after the quake the threat for flooding and landslides has increased even prompting JMA to lower the threshold for these warnings.

 SOUTH

Overall, the intense heat in parts of the south has declined just a bit, however, dangerous heat indices are prevalent in a wider area as locations which have not seen intense temperatures thus far watch the mercury climb to hazardous levels. Indochina will once again be the hot spot, and the heat will not be restricted to just inland locations today. To the south, clouds and showers will affect parts of the southern Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia as tropical moisture gets a lift from the hot afternoon sun.

The indo-china Pennisula has been dealing with extreme drought lately, and any rain that does come is highly valued. The video below I explain how the drought even had impacts on the Thai New Year.

 TROPICS 

The tropics remain quiet, with no organized activity present. Normal moisture levels abound across the region, and we only have a couple of weak easterly waves in the region, sliding slowly to the west along the weak I.T.C.Z. (Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone), so, conditions look to remain quiet for the foreseeable future.  A little spit in the cloud cover in fact can be seen east of Palau, models show a slight low here but combined with the back pressure it really amounts to about nothing.

Its Monday! Enjoy the rest of your day.

Also met up with the crew at Okinawa Typhoon Pics & Info for brunch in Tokyo. Great people and a good follow for those in the southern islands of Japan. -Rob.

The globe has been growing through a unprecedented heat wave this year with the hottest global average on record set in January only to be broken in February and now as scientist look back at March they have confirmed that that month shattered the previous record.  A full 1.22C or 2.20F above the global 20^th century average.

In fact if we look back at the past six months each one has set a record for the respective months since records began in 1880.

The steady buildup of temperatures globally over the recent months is a result of climate change enhanced by human activities including trapped greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Plus an abundance of heat has been released from the eastern pacific ocean due to the intense El Nino we have seen in 2015 in to 2016.

The globe on an average is warming but what this does result in is more extremes in the average weather pattern, this does not only mean heat waves but also cold snaps due to wavering in upper level Jet Stream.

This Meme here really demonstrates what someone sounds like when they say “so much for global warming” when it snows out of season.

More and more people that that believe climate change is not real are becoming a minority. And with predications of where things are going coming true over and over again that minority will become even smaller.

Video below is from last week during a unprecedented amount of ice melting on the Greenland Ice Sheet.

A powerful cyclone continues to swirl off the Northern Coast of Madagascar this week. At one power the US Militarys Joint Typhoon Warning Center rated the storm an equivalent of a Cat 5 Typhoon while the MeteoFrance out of La Reunion (The Official Warnings on the Storm) show the storm as a “Very Intense Tropical Cyclone” with winds sustained at 222kph Tuesday Morning.

JTWC WARNING

The storms track is not 100% certain at this time as a lack of steering flow is causing it to wobble back east then west again in the forecast. Really skirting the coastline of Madagascar in the process. Good news while all this is happening it should continue to weaken, the slow movement combined with outer rain bands could bring some heavy rainfall and possible flooding along the northern coastline of the island.

NOAA IMAGE

Images of this storm at its peak is rather impressive and is why despite it being in the Indian Ocean and not in the Western Pacific I felt compelled to write a quick update on this beast.

In February of 2015 the country was hit by severe floods killing 14 people and leaving 24,000 homeless. “Photo Below”.

2015 Flooding