NASA notes 9th northwestern Pacific Tropical Cyclone

The ninth tropical depression of the Northwestern Pacific Ocean has formed and developed into a tropical storm. Tropical Storm Kulap was spotted by NASA's Terra satellite far to the west of Midway Island.

On July 20 at 1:30 p.m. EDT, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible light image of Tropical Storm Kulap. The visible MODIS image showed a large band of thunderstorms northeast and southwest of the low-level center. The visible imagery shows the largest area of thunderstorms southwest of the center. Animated enhanced infrared satellite imagery also showed an area of elongated deep convection with the center located along the southwest edge of the deep convection.

At July 21 at 11 a.m. EDT (15 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Kulap was located near 28.4 degrees north latitude and 177.7 degrees east longitude. That's about 745 miles nautical miles northeast of Wake Island. Kulap had maximum sustained winds near 40 mph (35 knots/62 kph).

Kulap was moving toward the north-northwest near 19.5 mph (17 knots/31.4 kph).

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast calls for Kulap to maintain strength as a tropical storm over the next 5 days as it moves in a west-northwesterly direction toward the big island of Japan.