Hurricane season 2026

[Durian Fiend]

Windy TV shows strongest gusts tonight and tomorrow AM for Hilo, up to 23 knots. Puna should be a bit higher. Wind direction looks like it stays basically east, so that's good since it's not an usual direction for strong gusts.

Latest from Durgin:

"Let's look at the odds of Nolo defying the models and reaching our island.
A northward wobble: usually limited to 0.4 degrees
A rapid intensification with better alignment of upper and lower circulations and then steered more so by upper level flow: 0.5 degrees.
Major delay in rebuilding ridge to the north: 0.5 degrees
Wobbles are always possible as are variations in forecast track. Rapid intensification would require the easterly shear that has been present for the past 3 days to decrease.
The ridge looks on track to rebuild because it's progress is in large part determined by the westward movement of the upper level low to the northwest of Kauai. Which is still moving west, so that's not looking very likely.
In order to get a direct hit on our island the cummulative odds are likely below 1%. A deviation in track that brings some damaging winds to our southern shores could be as high as 15% (IMHO)."

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Thanks kalianna, great find, great website.

Here’s another weather related page. You don’t have to download the app to use it just click through. It’s a live look at Nolo, position, wind speeds, etc.

https://zoom.earth/storms/nolo-2026/#map=radar

Tap the i on the right side of the page for forecast sources, satellite imagery sources.

[kalianna]

Nice! Thanks, HOTPE. First site Iʻve seen that has rain and path on the same graphic. Now all I need is one that also shows the size of the storm included with the other two.

[ironyak]

You mean something like Wunderground's Wundermap with the Weather Station Temperature/Winds speeds, Radar, Satellite, and Active Storms layers on (and opacity adjusted)?
   

Or do you mean with the Windy-type moving particle animation interpretative visualization?

[MyManao]

Well, thank all the gods the guys that do the predictions get 'em right, and da buggah is on it's way out.

Really, after Nolo stalled right there to our south all night it is such a relief to see it actually kick up its heals and head out west.. which is probably most graphically appreciated using the good ol' tried and true animated infrared view the guys up on the Mauna provide.. here. Where, at the time of this posting there has been substantial forward, westerly, movement for over an hour already.

For another fun way to look at it the GOES-West Viewer in GeoColor is providing a pretty nice view of it here.

[kalianna]

What I donʻt understand is that the models and forecasters have been quite accurate in terms of predicting the path, size, timing and speed of Nolo. So why have the "catastrophic rain" predictions been so far off? Mind you, Iʻm certainly not complaining about this. Iʻll take "oopsie" over "oh oh" any day.

And aside to Ironyak: Wunderground is my usual non-hurricane source and yes, it has all of those features but the satellite loop is just a few static images. But thanks for suggesting it.

[MyManao]

What I donʻt understand is that the models and forecasters have been quite accurate in terms of predicting the path, size, timing and speed of Nolo.  So why have the "catastrophic rain" predictions been so far off?  Mind you, Iʻm certainly not complaining about this.  Iʻll take "oopsie" over "oh oh" any day.

I agree, oopsie is preferable.. but they don't seem to include self analysis in their reporting. And still I have faith they do the best they can with what they have.. and probably err to the greater, rather than lesser, when it cones to rain because of the consequences of flooding to a lackadaisical constituency. 

I am not as irked by their shortcomings as much as I am by the FBers that always lead with the worst case scenario. The whole the sky is gonna fall schtick gets more tiring with use. At least the feds try to keep an even keel, and present what they got, and adjust it over time as is warranted, without always going to the worst case as a lead.

[ironyak]

kalianna - Wunderground is my usual non-hurricane source and yes, it has all of those features but the satellite loop is just a few static images.
Yeah, it's one of the few free sources that I know of that can combine all those layers together on the fly.

Windy has a "Hurricane Tracker" layer in their Menu options that provides storm path and notes, that you can use with the "Satellite layer" and "Overlay with Radar" option in the lower left, and "Weather Stations - Wind" in the lower right to also combine all that info, and does have smoother animations overall. May be worth taking a look at as well, even though the interface is busy af IMO - but any site that shows the storm moving away is AOK by me ;)

   

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

models and forecasters have been quite accurate in terms of predicting the path

They were generally accurate plotting the path, but details changed over the previous 3 or 4 days.  Early forecasts showed a potential path closer to the island, but the storm stalled and didn’t get as far north which kept the outer rain bands mostly off island.  When I checked the local forecast for HPP it started a few days ago showing 8” of rain expected Saturday (today), a day later dropped to 4”, then 2”. 

I find government agencies are slow moving, and once they start their response based on a forecast from 3 or 4 days out, they are slow to adjust.  Or don’t or won’t adjust.  Their messaging continues to focus on that worst case scenario, and schools and businesses respond to that expection.

One year the county sent out volunteers and workers with printed warnings to inform me I had to evacuate from an approaching storm.  All of that prep, scheduling, printing, etc occurred 3 or 4 days before landfall.  They came to my house 2 days before but by then the storm had dramatically changed course far away from Big Island.  No matter how much I pointed out the path had changed they still insisted I had to get out.

[Durian Fiend]

Hurricane watch is cancelled. Yay!

Mark Morrissey just posted today on Substack an article addressing the question of whether our mountains protect us from hurricanes.

https://ctranch.substack.com/p/do-the-bi...paign=post&utm_medium=web

Here's the spoiler:

"...As a hurricane approaches mountainous terrain, the mountains can block and redirect the lower-level winds while the circulation farther above the surface continues to be influenced by the larger atmospheric steering currents.

The hurricane can therefore become distorted.

It can slow down.

Its center can change direction.

Its low-level circulation can weaken.

A new circulation can sometimes develop on the other side of the mountains.

But none of those possibilities means that a hurricane must go around the island..."