NASA’s Aqua satellite finds Tropical Storm Danas over Ryuku Islands

NASA’s Aqua satellite found Tropical Storm Danas moving over Japan’s Ryuku island chain in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean.

The Ruyku islands include Osumi, Tokara, Amami, Okinawa, Yonaguni and the Sakishima Islands. The island chain extends southwest from Kyushu to Taiwan.

On July 18 at 1:20 a.m. EDT (0520 UTC), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite provided a visible image of Danas that showed a large storm over Japan’s Ryuku Island chain. The image shows that Danas is being affected by vertical wind shear, where winds at different levels of the atmosphere around the tropical cyclone are pushing against it and affecting the storm’s shape. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted, “A large area of deep convection sheared 60 nautical miles southward of a consolidating low-level center.

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), on July 18, the center of Danas was located near latitude 26.7 degrees north and longitude 123.6 degrees west. Danas was about 215 nautical miles west of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan. Danas was moving to the north and had maximum sustained winds near 40 knots (46 mph/74 kph).

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center expects Danas to veer to the north-northeast and run parallel to the east coast of China, moving into the Yellow Sea and across the Korean peninsula. Danas is expected to dissipate after it moves into the Sea of Japan.

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