Hurricane season 2026

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Here’s Iselle’s cone less than 24 hours from landfall, which turned out to be a fairly accurate forecast..

I don't think that's correct. From what I can tell,

Hilo got 15mph less winds, …the abundance of Albizia, and they all blew down, and took the grid with them. Without the Albizia the damage would have been far less.

A couple of comments and/or clarifications.
The forecast which I said was fairly accurate showed a path and a cone of uncertainty.  The actual path did fall within the cone of uncertainty.  So I considered it a fairly accurate forecast.

I watched the TV newscasters from my front row seat in HPP during Iselle.  Until the power went out.  They had flown in from Honolulu, and many of their comments entailed wondering where the storm was.  The weather didn’t seem bad to them.  During the night in HPP I heard the wind switch direction three or four  times, blow off branches from my Cook Island Pines that have never blown off any other time in 25 years.  Beach Road was closed for a week without a single albezia in sight.  Almost all the ironwoods were on their sides, with roots that had clearly never penetrated into the rock because there is little soil in HPP.  Ironwoods and most other trees had a mat of roots that had spread outward across the lava, never penetrating down, so when the winds hit they fell, exposing a circular mat of roots sometimes 6-8 feet in diameter, some even larger.  I’ve never seen this in 25 years either.  Yes there was substantial albezia damage, but there was plenty of damage from other trees as well.

The difference in wind speed between Hilo and HPP far exceeded your 15 mph estimate.  I don’t know by how much, but if you would provide me with a link to an Iselle wind speed map I’d like to see it.  I would guess it was more like 25-30 mph.

The north side of these storms is the most destructive, but depending on the storm the winds can drop off relatively quickly as you go farther north.  Let’s hope Puna is far enough north of Lala’s path.