‘Perla’ intensifies into severe tropical storm – Pagasa
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:44:14 +0000
“PERLA” (international name: “Neoguri”) intensified into a severe tropical storm on Saturday and hovered over extreme Northern Luzon, the state-run weather bureau said.
In its 10 a.m. bulletin, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) last spotted “Perla” at 600 kilometers east of Basco, Batanes, packing maximum sustained winds of 95 kilometers per hour (kph) near the center and gustiness of up to 115 kph. It was moving west-northwest at 15 kph.
Pagasa’s Benison Estareja said, however, that Perla was unlikely to bring significant high-impact weather but advised residents and disaster managers to continue monitoring for updates.
Pagasa warned that sea travel was risky, especially for small vessels, over the seaboards of Northern Luzon because of potentially rough sea conditions associated with the northeasterly surface wind flow.
Extreme Northern Luzon will experience occasional gusts until early next week because of the prevailing northeasterly surface wind flow.
Gale warning remains up in Batanes, Cagayan, Babuyan Islands, Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union, Pangasinan, and Isabela.
Perla is expected to exit the Philippine Area of Responsibility (PAR) between Sunday (October 20) evening and Monday (October 21) morning.
No storm signal was raised. FRANZ EMBUDO