Typhoon Dolphin dropped out of super typhoon territory Saturday, weakening to a still-powerful 145 mph storm, even as forecasters started eyeing a possible run at Okinawa and Japan’s outer islands by the end of next week.
According to Advisory Number 20, issued Saturday morning by the National Weather Service office in Tiyan, Dolphin was centered about 1,020 miles east-northeast of Guam and moving northwest at 14 mph. The advisory called for the storm to intensify again overnight, even as its longer-range trend points toward a gradual weakening.
The storm will keep its distance from the island chain, said Brandon Aydlett, science and operations officer at the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office Guam. “It will stay pretty clear of the Marianas as it passes to the north in the coming days,” he told The Guam Daily Post Saturday morning.
Aydlett confirmed the storm’s closest approach will keep it roughly 700 to 800 miles north of Guam, in line with forecasts from earlier in the week.
Forecasters tied the storm’s gradual decline to its push into cooler waters and a drier atmosphere at higher latitudes. “That just generally allows typhoons to slowly weaken,” Aydlett said. Even so, he added that the Joint Typhoon Warning Center’s latest track keeps Dolphin at major strength for days to come. “We’re still looking at a Category 3 typhoon, even Thursday morning, based on the latest tracks,” he said.
That track is what has forecasters turning their attention toward Japan. Aydlett said the storm could bring typhoon conditions to the outer islands and the Okinawa region as it continues north. “That’s one of the things to be watching for the end of next week,” he said.
Closer to home, a gale watch remains in effect for Guam’s coastal waters from Sunday morning through late Tuesday night, according to the National Weather Service. The bulletin calls for west winds of 15 to 25 knots, gusts up to 35 knots, and seas building to 7 to 12 feet as a monsoon surge tied to Dolphin pushes into local waters.
Aydlett said the pattern should hold steady through the workweek for the Marianas and the rest of Micronesia. “It’s going to be kind of a steady-state pattern for the next week for us,” he said, with conditions gradually turning wetter and windier. “That showery weather is going to be more prevailing as we head from Sunday into Monday, Tuesday, (and) Wednesday,” he said, adding that seas will grow choppier through the period.
Forecasters are also watching a broad area of disturbed weather south of Wake Island that could organize into a tropical system in the coming days, though Aydlett said it poses no known threat to Guam. “It only exists in the model realm, and we’re going to be watching those trends within the models and just to be on the alert,” he said.
A separate system, Invest 94W, continues to track along the eastern coast of the Philippines and is not expected to affect the Marianas or Micronesia, Aydlett said.
The next advisory on Dolphin is scheduled for 2 a.m. Sunday.