09-12-2018, 03:58 PM
Hopefully, some lessons will be learned. We now have three recent examples of tropical storms hitting the islands: Iselle, Darby, and Olivia. The first two hit the Big Island, crossed it, and remained tropical storms as they re-entered ocean waters on the west side of the island causing damage on other islands. Olivia hit Maui and remained a tropical storm as it passed over the west side of the island and also caused damage on other islands.
Just imagine if one of them had hit the islands as a powerful hurricane.
HOTPE - I suspect the erratic movements of Olivia close to the islands was due to the system becoming a low-level cyclone as vertical shear removed its top. Its movement became dominated by the trades rather than the usual mix of upper and lower-level winds, so there was a little bit of a battle going on between those two components until the trades took over completely.
Just imagine if one of them had hit the islands as a powerful hurricane.
HOTPE - I suspect the erratic movements of Olivia close to the islands was due to the system becoming a low-level cyclone as vertical shear removed its top. Its movement became dominated by the trades rather than the usual mix of upper and lower-level winds, so there was a little bit of a battle going on between those two components until the trades took over completely.