00:00While Cristobal has faded away from the North Atlantic after a very short-lived run, 24 hours
00:06or less, wasn't much of a storm, it's a statistic more than anything, we're going to take you into
00:10the Pacific because we have two named storms now. We have Lala, a tropical storm that is going to
00:17impact Hawaii, and also Tropical Storm Hernan. Hernan doesn't have a whole lot of life ahead
00:21of it in terms of impacts, but Lala will be an impactful storm, and we're dealing with some
00:27concerns here across this region. We're going to be watching as this storm moves to the west and
00:32northwest into an area that will impact the Big Island. Now the most likely scenario is that it
00:38stays very close to the southern tip of the Big Island as a tropical storm, but it is an impactful
00:45situation here, and we're going to be dealing with some dry air on the north side of this. In fact,
00:50I could bring up the Pacific water vapor loop, and I'm going to zoom this out to show you all
00:57this
00:58dry air on the northwestern fringe of the storm zone. So I'm going to slide this out here a little
01:07bit
01:08firmer, and we can show you just that while we have two named storms on the map, again here we're
01:14dealing
01:14with some zones of pretty deep convection out there as well. A lot of moisture across this area, but there's
01:20a
01:20strong delineation between very dry, dusty air, and in this case it's mainly just dry air, not so much
01:27dust. The Saharan dust doesn't influence this area like it does the Atlantic, but very dry air to the
01:33north of this area here. So as we kind of lock this in place, and I want to loop this
01:40for you to show you
01:41how things are behaving, we're going to see Lala move into the fringe of this area with very dry
01:50air, and it's going to initially begin to import a little bit of its own moisture, but if this were
01:55to jog much farther north, it would be really battling some dry air, and it may even ingest some
02:00of that. There's some deep convection though tied to this right now, and again there you can see also
02:06Hernan off to the east. But as Lala makes a push into this zone, it's not a very welcoming environment,
02:12so I suspect we're going to see this remain a tropical storm through the time at which it crosses
02:18the longitude of Hawaii. There's a small chance it could strengthen into a hurricane before then,
02:25but I really suspect it's going to be remaining a tropical storm, and that's what our forecast team
02:30is on board with as well. So let's take a look at some steering influences,
02:33and before we get too far along, here is the BP high pressure system to the north that's directing
02:40the steering flow around this part of the Pacific. So we can illustrate the steering flow generally
02:48shoving, well, Herman south southwestward and Lala almost directly to the west, if not maybe a smidge
02:56north to do west. So here's the GFS. Let's take it forward. Friday, Friday evening into Saturday morning.
03:03Now, as we get deeper into Saturday, it's going to be really, really close to the big island. That's the
03:09GFS. Let's just scan the same time frame to the European, a little farther north than the European.
03:16So what is dictating this? With the GFS, the positioning of that large high pressure system
03:24is kind of due north of the westernmost primary Hawaiian islands. There are tiny islands that go
03:32farther west, but kind of due north of some of the western islands. And that is an influence in
03:40steering this storm as it is. And a 594 contour for the thickness or the height of that zone.
03:50It's a little bolder, a little bigger, but similarly placed here with the European.
03:56But as we just got to compare these two and then see how things evolve. Let's go down to the
04:01ground
04:01and look at the surface pressure field. And here we have a pesky storm, a tropical storm passing just
04:07south of the big island with the GFS, and then continuing to drift a little farther northwest,
04:13and strengthen a bit with deepening pressure as it passes. Here's the European. Closer to land,
04:20very close to land. And if we were to compare the intensity of this, it would be similar in intensity,
04:29around 998 millibars, maybe reaching 998 a little earlier with the European strengthening just a smidge
04:36faster. Let's go to the Canadian just for comparison. Canadian is decisively farther south,
04:42missing landfall by a bit of a margin. And then the UK meant it's a little more of an
04:49average of some of these models clipping the big island. Let's look at some impacts here.
04:54Here's the NAM. Now we have a three kilometer grid to the NAM or the wharf,
04:59high res modeling just for Hawaii, which is kind of nice in a storm like this. So here we go.
05:04And we're moving forward. Here comes the storm. It only goes out to 8pm Eastern or around 2pm
05:10Hawaiian time Saturday. So beware of that. High resolution doesn't go as far out in the model
05:14world. But you can see a 986 low. The NAM wraps this up. This could become a hurricane if the
05:20NAM
05:21is correct. And this could be one of those very rare cases that we see a true hurricane landfall
05:25in the Big Island if the NAM may be corrected. It'd be close. Tropical storm or hurricane.
05:31Other models farther south, not as strong. Just beware of that.
05:34And we'd be getting into some heavy rain. And you can see the strong winds. Unfortunately,
05:38we're going to have to wait a little bit deeper into the day on Friday. We can show you in
05:42the
05:42afternoon how this plays out as the model will cover its life cycle through Hawaii. But you know,
05:48it's high res, so it takes it out to a certain point. But that's some fierce wind. We got 70
05:52to 80
05:53knot winds, at least as gusts, about 30 feet into the sky, approaching the Big Island's coast.
05:59It's going to be a big deal. Max wind gusts in the GFS. This is lower resolution, admittedly.
06:05Because the GFS is farther south, it doesn't bring tremendous wind to the islands.
06:09The European does, because it's a little farther north, higher grid resolution. And here I could
06:14see a 77 knot wind gust here on the coast. And that would be like an 88, 89 mile per
06:22hour wind gust.
06:23That would be a big deal. A strong tropical storm force wind. And gusts at moments that would be
06:29like a hurricane for brief moments. Total rainfall. Here you can see that deep blue over half a foot
06:35on the east slopes of the mountains. The European higher grid resolution is cracking out 10 inch
06:40amounts. And even a hint, a suggestion, something more closer to two feet for some.
Comments