Super Typhoon Bavi rapidly intensifies to a Category 5 storm east of Guam, eventually making landfall on the island of Rota
Super Typhoon Bavi rapidly intensified to a Category 5 tropical cyclone (ADT | SATCON) east of Guam on 03 July 2026. Bavi was moving through a very favorable environment characterized by low values of deep-layer wind shear (above) as it was traversing progressively warmer water (Sea Surface Temperature | Ocean Heat Content). Shear, ADT, SATCON, SST and OHC products were sourced from the CIMSS Tropical Cyclones site.
10-minute Full Disk scan JMA Himawari-9 AHI Visible and Infrared images (below) provided a post-sunrise view of Bavi.
Himawari-9 Visible images (below) revealed the presence of low-altitude mesovortices within the eye of Bavi.
A daytime NOAA-21 VIIRS Day/Night Band image (below) also displayed the signature of low-altitude mesovortices within the eye.
===== 05 July Update =====
A Himawari-9 Target Sector was positioned over Super Typhoon Bavi on 05 July, providing imagery at 2.5-minute intervals. Himawari-9 Infrared Window images (above) showed Bavi — which had reached an intensity of 155 knots at 1200 UTC (JTWC discussion | ADT | SATCON) — as its eye approached the small island of Rota, located between Saipan to the north and Guam to the south. Bavi remained in a very favorable environment for intensification, with factors such as low deep-layer wind shear and warm water (SST | OHC).
The coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures within the eyewall region of Bavi were around -80 C (violet pixels) — which roughly corresponded to the Most Unstable (MU) air parcel’s Equilibrium Level (EL) at a pressure of 100 hPa, according to a plot of rawinsonde data from Guam (below).
A nighttime NOAA-20 VIIRS Day/Night Band image (below) displayed the large eye of Bavi as it was southeast of the island of Rota. Peak wind gusts just prior to the image time included 67 knots at Andersen Ar Force Base, 63 knots at Guam International Airport and 55 knots at Saipan International Airport. “Side-lighting” from the Moon — which was in its Waning Gibbous phase, at 72% of full — was brightly illuminating the western eyewall’s interior vertical edge.
In a side-by-side comparison of 2.5-minute Himawari-9 Visible and Infrared Window images (below), low-altitude mesovortices were very apparent within the eye as its center passed just north of Rota.
A daytime NOAA-21 VIIRS Day/Night Band image (below) showed Bavi after its center had moved northwest of Rota. Peak wind gusts shortly before the time of the image included 96 knots at Guam International Airport, 80 knots at Andersen Air Force Base and 67 knots at Saipan International Airport. The overall peak wind gusts at those 3 METAR sites during the passage of Bavi were 96 knots at Guam, 96 knots at Saipan and 83 knots at Andersen.
The remarkably strong winds of Bavi induced large waves on the ocean surface — in fact, at 1246 UTC on 06 July the Jason-3 satellite sensed Significant Wave Height values as high as 58.70 feet west of the Mariana Islands (below).
===== 09 July Update =====
An analysis of Sea Surface Temperature from late in the day on 09 July (below) revealed a swath of cold water upwelling (brought about by the aforementioned large waves) along a portion of the track of Bavi — most notably in the area of of the Mariana Islands just north of Guam, where SST values had cooled from around 30 C on 05 July to around 27 C on 09 July.