Hurricane Lane - a Central Pacific special: August 22, Update A

Aloha! The story so far... another beautiful day on Oahu today...

(photo credit: Malia M.)

Meanwhile, off in the distant south, Hurricane Lane is still a pretty good looking, decent cat 4 storm with winds estimated from satellites to be 145mph, central pressure of 939mb (cat 4 range: 131 - 156mph). Given his vorticity structure (which you know all about now - if you don't read yesterday's post! :-)) throughout the troposphere and his current satellite appearance, I think he's a little stronger than this, but there are factors that are coming into play that will hopefully weaken him a little over the next couple of days. 

He is currently at 15.9N, 156.5W and about 260 miles south of the Big Island, so he still has a way to go to get there. He's moving NW at a slightly slow 8mph:

The good news (so far) is that he has been moving a little more to the west of the center of the cone so the forecast is that he won't be a direct hit on the Big Island, however they will still get some strong winds and they are already collecting a few bucket-loads of rain. In addition to the rain, storm surge will be high on the south and west coasts because winds move in a counter-clockwise direction around a low pressure system (which is what a hurricane is), so as he passes by to the west, he'll also be pushing water on shore. 

Because he isn't going to be as close to this island, it won't have as big an influence on reducing his intensity as it looked like with yesterday's track. However, the wind shear is still in place and the main convective area should start to interact with that in the next 24 hours - by tomorrow we should see begin to see some of the effects of that in the clouds on the satellite image. For today, he is still looking good:

You can see some of the wind shear taking hold of his outer rain bands - the clouds that are streaming off to the north and then being carried away to the east. 

Tomorrow I think we should begin to see a gradual weakening but I think he'll still be a cat 4 tomorrow, despite the wind shear. One thing that will sustain him is that the ocean is quite warm, and he's about to move into an area where the upper ~100m of water is warmer than 26 deg C - which means he has enough fuel to sustain him. The competing influences of the ocean and atmosphere will only very slowly decrease his intensity.  

And now for a new feature (thanks to Aida A. for the suggestion)... a wine-paring to go with this post. Hmm... Lane is a full bodied, robust storm that is being a bit of a nuisance to some very nice islands, so I am not a huge fan of him... I think that'll be a Shiraz! ;-) 

Until tomorrow!

J. 

Twitter: jyovianstorm

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DISCLAIMER:
These remarks are just what I think/see regarding tropical storms. If you are making an evacuation decision, please heed your local emergency management and the National Hurricane Center's official forecast. This is not an official forecast.
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