I guess that's why it's not called US warming. This was Friday.
Category 5 Phailin Nears India; Category 3 Nari Hits the Philippines
Extremely dangerous Tropical Cyclone Phailin has maintained Category 5 strength for six hours, and is expected to remain a Category 5 storm until it is just a few hours from landfall on the northeast coast of India on the Bay of Bengal, according to the 5 pm EDT Friday advisory from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. Phailin put on a phenomenal burst of rapid intensification on Thursday, going from a tropical storm with 65 mph winds to a top-end Category 4 storm with 155 mph winds in just 24 hours, and is now at peak strength of 160 mph, tying it with Super Typhoon Usagi as Earth's strongest tropical cyclone of 2013. Satellite images show that Phailin maintained very intense thunderstorms with cold cloud tops in its eyewall, with the 5 pm EDT Friday satellite estimate of Phailin's central pressure at 911 mb. This makes Phailin equal in strength to the great 1999 Odisha Cyclone, which killed 9,658 people in India's Odisha province. Radar out of Visakhapanam, India shows that heavy rains from the outer bands of Phailin are already affecting the coast, and these bands were bringing rainfall rates of over an inch per hour, as estimated by microwave data from 18 UTC Friday. Phailin is over ocean waters that have warmed since Thursday, and are now 29 - 30°C. These warm waters extend to a lesser depth than before, and ocean heat content has dropped to a moderate 20 - 40 kJ/cm^2. Wind shear remains low, 5 - 10 knots, and Phailin has strong upper-level outflow, thanks to an anticyclone positioned in the upper atmosphere over the cyclone.
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