Hurricane season 2026

[Durian Fiend]

What Durgin says..

I have yet to be impressed with Durgin's powers of deduction.. and will add..

Mark Morrisey says the same thing as Durgin.  

"...So what about the burning question on everyone’s mind? Is the Big Island really protected from hurricanes by the mountains? Or is that a myth?

“The Hawaiian Islands rarely get hit by dead-on hurricanes,” explains Morrissey. “We have a semi-permanent natural zone of protection consisting of vertical shear. (Officially called the “Tropical Upper Tropospheric Trough,” or TUTT.) Hurricanes can’t survive it. We have had hurricanes hit the Islands (‘Iniki and ‘Iwa, for example), but it’s really very rare — maybe four or five in the last 100 years?
“As for the mountains, they definitely can disrupt the circulation, but the hurricane needs to get close enough for that interaction to occur. It doesn’t happen before they get here.”
Morrissey believes that hurricanes are actually very fragile things.
“They do best (strengthening) when they are in a place where nothing is happening,” he says. “But then they will weaken rapidly, especially when entering a shear zone, which is what happened to Lane. In the case of Lane, it survived longer than I thought it would. But once it moved into the shear zone, bang, it was done for.”

https://www.hawaiiislandmidweek.com/puna-weather/

[MyManao]

The island begins to impact a cyclonic system as soon as the system’s outer edge makes contact with it. If it is going to shear its interior it’s going to shear its outer reaches alike. There is no magic, no difference. It’s an immovable land form that denies any air mass that would like to be in its place. Simple as that. To say it doesn’t affect until some point later in the storm’s passage is just nonsense. It’s not some kind of woo woo, it’s plane and simple physics. Land form, air mass, interaction.

To say the interaction is greater the deeper into the cyclonic system the land form is, sure. But to say it has no impact until some moment beyond the first contact is ridiculous. Air mass, land form, interaction. The air cannot pass through the land and as such has to go elsewhere. Around, over, but not through. And, the air that goes over gets dragged down by its interaction with the land. On the storm's outer reaches there's less of an effect, for sure, it's in contact with a smaller portion of the storm, but still an effect.

We can imagine other things.. like the air between the land form and the center of the system being compressed by the forward motion of the system, and that compressed air pushing back onto the center and as such nudging, steering, it one way or another. We can talk about the wobble set in motion when the shearing begins and becoming greater over time, and the closer the center of the air mass gets. There’s all sorts of stuff to ‘model’ when we consider how the land/air interaction develops, but the interaction starts the moment the air makes contact. Seriously, Fiend, how could it be otherwise?

You do remember the Butterfly effect yeah?

[TomK]

What Durgin says..

I have yet to be impressed with Durgin's powers of deduction.. and will add..

Yet, you used Durgin's article to post this:

"Finally! After years and years of our illustrious "scientist" vehemently saying otherwise, our Maunas get their due!"

That's backpeddling. More to come.

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Now obviously we can’t plant Cook Island Pines on the summit of Mauna Kea, it’s too dry and too cold.  But what if something else could raise the elevation of the mauna, adding to its possible effect as a physical barrier?  To protect our island even more from hurricanes?

You have to ask "will these winds be so might, as to lay low the mountains of the Earth?"

https://youtu.be/-hJQ18S6aag?si=DD_c6EwN9B6gjSkB

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The island begins to impact a cyclonic system as soon as the system’s outer edge makes contact with it. If it is going to shear its interior it’s going to shear its outer reaches alike. 

[...]

Citation, please, or is this your opinion?

"To say the interaction is greater the deeper into the cyclonic system the land form is, sure. But to say it has no impact until some moment beyond the first contact is ridiculous. Air mass, land form, interaction. The air cannot pass through the land and as such has to go elsewhere. Around, over, but not through. And, the air that goes over gets dragged down by its interaction with the land. On the storm's outer reaches there's less of an effect, for sure, it's in contact with a smaller portion of the storm, but still an effect."

You're going to have to explain how the first contact of land with the outer layers of a storm will affect the center of the storm's strength and track. You seem to say it must do, but provide no mechanism. Please cite examples of how that happens.

"We can imagine other things.."

Of course, we can. It doesn't mean you know what you're talking about.

[...]"like the air between the land form and the center of the system being compressed by the forward motion of the system, and that compressed air pushing back onto the center and as such nudging, steering, it one way or another. We can talk about the wobble set in motion when the shearing begins and becoming greater over time, and the closer the center of the air mass gets. There’s all sorts of stuff to ‘model’ when we consider how the land/air interaction develops, but the interaction starts the moment the air makes contact."

I see nothing scientific here. It's just what someone wants. What air mass? What shear from the island when a storm is hundreds of miles offshore? Compressed air? If the air is compressed, the pressure would go up with an approaching storm; it does the opposite.

"Seriously, Fiend, how could it be otherwise?

You do remember the Butterfly effect yeah?"

Yeah, Durian Fiend, you do remember the Butterfly Effect and how it relates to the mountains of Hawaii affecting hurricanes, right?

And MyManao, if you are going to respond, any chance you can keep it civil and on point? You've made a lot of claims, and I'm simply asking you to back them up with evidence. Nothing more than that. I expect this request will fall on deaf ears, but it's out there.

[MyManao]

While we are, speculating..

What about that phrase baffles you Tom?

[TomK]

While we are, speculating..

What about that phrase baffles you Tom?

It doesn't baffle me. You didn't write that  yet you make it look as though you dit. It was a quote by Durgin that Durian Fiend posted here. You've made a bunch of claims in this thread that you won't back up, including your usual insults, and now you make it look as though you were the one speculating. 

That is so dishonest. It's beyond belief that you can be so blatantly dishonest. I'm speechless.

[MyManao]

That is so dishonest. It's beyond belief that you can be so blatantly dishonest. I'm speechless.

It was a direct quote of mine. But hey, talk about being civil and keeping it on point. Thanks for the example.

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Yeah, Durian Fiend, you do remember the Butterfly Effect and how it relates to the mountains of Hawaii affecting hurricanes, right?

Interestingly, the Butterfly Effect was coined, as the link I added to my original post states, by meteorologist Ed Lorenz...

From.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.

The term is closely associated with the work of the mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz. He noted that the butterfly effect is derived from the example of the details of a tornado (the exact time of formation, the exact path taken) being influenced by minor perturbations such as a distant butterfly flapping its wings several weeks earlier. Lorenz originally used a seagull causing a storm but was persuaded to make it more poetic with the use of a butterfly and tornado by 1972.[1][2] He discovered the effect when he observed runs of his weather model with initial condition data that were rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner. He noted that the weather model would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data. A very small change in initial conditions had created a significantly different outcome.

Which if you ask me it sure does come close to the point. But hey, you'd have to be reading posts and contemplating their meaning to figure that out, Tom. And, as it is, you seem bent on a particular agenda which makes comprehension of things outside your limited intent hard to fathom. Oh well.

[TomK]

OK, so Durgin wasn't speculating, and you were by admission. I apologize for mixing that up. However, how does that help your arguments?

All of this from your claim that:

"Finally! After years and years of our illustrious "scientist" vehemently saying otherwise, our Maunas get their due!"

To summarize, Durgin says the island doesn't protect itself; it may help the more western islands, and the mountains may actually help draw storms toward Hawaii Island. In the meantime, you've made a bunch of other claims that you can't support with evidence. Are you willing to back up those arguments?

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That is so dishonest. It's beyond belief that you can be so blatantly dishonest. I'm speechless.

It was a direct quote of mine. But hey, talk about being civil and keeping it on point. Thanks for the example.

---

Yeah, Durian Fiend, you do remember the Butterfly Effect and how it relates to the mountains of Hawaii affecting hurricanes, right?

Interestingly, the Butterfly Effect was coined, as the link I added to my original post states, by meteorologist Ed Lorenz...

From.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.

Yes, a later state, not one that is just offshore. How does the Butterfly Effect cause the center of a storm to change track and intensity while it's a few hundred miles offshore? You have it the wrong way round. The Butterfly Effect is a potential cause of a storm starting, not its center being deflected or influenced by mountains hundreds of miles ahead of it.

[MyManao]

To summarize, Durgin says the island doesn't protect itself

And, as I pointed out, the NWS says it does.

More than that.. I said my piece... ua lawa. Go find someone else to stroke your ego.

[Durian Fiend]

“No,” said John Bravender, the warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service forecast office in Honolulu. “The terrain does not protect us."

“The terrain really disrupts the structure and low-level rotation of a tropical cyclone, causing it to rapidly weaken,” Bravender said..."

https://bigislandnow.com/2023/07/18/myth...-cyclones/



"...That helps explain the origin of the myth that Maunakea and Mauna Loa protect the island from tropical cyclones, according to a research paper published in January 2018 in the Bulletin of the American Meterological Society

“As a result of this long absence of hurricane impacts, a number of myths have arisen such as ‘the volcanoes protect us,’ ‘only Kaua‘i gets hit’ or ‘there is no Hawaiian word for hurricane,'” says the research paper: “Hurricane with a History: Hawaiian Newspapers Illuminate an 1871 Storm.” It was co-written by Steven Businger, a professor of meteorology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa with a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences.....While Hawaii island has seen its share of severe weather from tropical storms, like Flossie and Iselle, it has never had a direct hurricane hit.

Is that due to the island’s formidable mountains?

No, says Steven Businger, chair of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Hawaii’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology.


“The thing that protects the Hawaiian islands is the wind shear,” he explained. “Unfortunately (in this case), the wind shear has pulled a little bit farther to the northwest, and therefore the storm is getting really close. It’s a dangerous storm.

“The Big Island is not actually protected,” Businger continued. “It’s quite possible that a significant hurricane could come in from the east (to) the Big Island. It’s a situation where, if you look at the climatology, the Big Island has the greatest threat for being hit by a hurricane.” https://www.khon2.com/news/do-mauna-kea-...urricanes/

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

* How many examples of something would it take for our understanding to be “definitive”? Way more than once, or twice. So even with a direct hit, just one, which we haven’t had in our time, we’d still be playing a guessing game.

So the premise is Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa protect Big Island from a hurricane.  However, should a hurricane hit our island it won’t disprove the presumption, the belief.  

It’s hard to argue with that.