FB isn't necessary for accessing Durgin's postings. His latest suggests a good chance of a hurricane on Saturday. Go to the website for animations.
https://punaweather.org/
"Today through early Friday warm and humid with light to moderate easterly trade winds and widely scattered showers.
Late Friday through this weekend possible hurricane conditions.
Let's look at the satellite animations together. The visible one shows an obvious circulation near 17N 142W. This center is devoid of convection and is a shallow feature being accelerated westward by the low level trade flow taking it into a vast area of dry air. This vortex will soon spin down and disappear.
Looking at the infrared loop we see something new, curved banding features indicating a center near 13N 143W. With intense convection (tops to -78C) this is likely to become the COC or center of circulation that One-C will organize around.
Now let's look at the water vapor animation and this is the most important one because it shows outflow beginning to make its way northwest of the activity. Moisture from the storm is beginning to moisten the environment the storm is moving into, negating the dampening effect of the mid-level dry air and allowing the storm to potentially strengthen into a hurricane as it approaches our island.
A center fix of 13N 143W verifies the initial conditions for the latest GFS run which now increases the storm to 989mb with a direct pass over Puna Saturday afternoon and evening. For reference Iselle came ashore at 1001mb. This scenario would bring hurricane force winds to our coast along with torrential rain and extreme surf and a 3'-4' storm surge for Hilo bay and 2'-3' elsewhere.
I have included various additional high resolution models for comparison.
This is my initial analysis. I am currently working on a more in-depth one, but wanted to get this one out as soon as possible so people can prepare for what might be the first recorded landfalling hurricane for Puna and Hilo."
