Category 5 Super Typhoon Dolphin in the West Pacific
2.5-minute Target Sector Himawari-9 Visible images (above) and Infrared Window images (below) showed Super Typhoon Dolphin as it reached 150-knot Category 5 intensity (ADT | D-MINT | SATCON) over the West Pacific Ocean (north of the Marshall Islands) at 2100 UTC on 29 July 2026. Mesovortices were evident within the eye — and periodic swirls of mid- to upper-level cloud material appeared to be shedding from the inner edge of the eyewall, suggesting that the mesovortex circulations (which are normally rather shallow) were fairly deep in this case.
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery (below) from around the beginning and ending times of the Himawari-9 animations displayed an apparent break in the eyewall, with hints of narrow wind features that were similar in appearance to the cloud filaments seen in Himawari images. Dolphin was also undergoing an eyewall replacement cycle during this time period.
