CoconutCandy
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Posts: 245
Loc: Beautiful Honolulu Hawaii
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Well, in comparison to rapidly developing Hurricane Felix, the activity in the EastPac is nothing to write home about. But worth writing here, as this is a well balanced site, and provides an opportunity for everyone interested to keep tabs on and discuss activity in the worlds' other tropical basins, as well.
TD Gil, which peaked out at 40 Kts., continues to spin down as it heads generally westwards over ever-cooler waters. Marginal SST's, a rather stable environment and persistent easterly shear never permitted Gil to make it much past minimal tropical storm strength. Still holding onto a little deep convection in the western semi-circle, and hence it's TD classification for now, the has it dissipating into a remnant low in less than than a day and totally dissipated by day 3.
Too bad. I was hoping Gil would hold together a little better, as a juicy remnant low, crossing into the Central Pacific and providing Hawaii some needed rains. Maui and the Big Island, especially, are still under drought conditions, after a moderate El Nino winter, which tends to keep our winter season rather dryer than normal.
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Henriette is still on the upswing in it's bid to become only(!) the 3rd Hurricane in the EastPac Basin this season (unusual) and only the 1st Hurricane to form near the western Mexico coastline (very unusual). The EastPac, being the 2nd most active basin in the world, after the WestPac, usually sees many more storms/hurricanes than what we've seen so far this season.
And, of the 2 EastPac Hurricanes (Cosme and Flossie) we've already seen, both had formed around 125W, or about the middle of the EastPac basin, and both went on to threaten or effect Hawaii in some way, especially Flossie. Potent Cat 4 Flossie gave everyone in Hawaii great concern for a'while until the blessed shear kicked in and tore her apart *before* she had the opportunity become "that notorious storm that clobbered the Big Island". Another bullet dodged. Whew!
Back to Henriette. The good news here is that she's tracked a little further west of the initially forecasted path, and the drenching torrential rains and TS force conditions that were anticipated never materialized for the folks along the coast. Good deal. They have enough problems with storms and floods and mudslides and the like every season. Henriette gave them a break, thankfully.
But she is still expected to attain min Cat 1 hurricane strength in the coming days, all the while undergoing a gentle recurvature. The keyword here is gentle. Had the recurvature been somewhat sharper, Cabo San Lucas would have had to contend with yet another hurricane. Now though, with a more leisure recurvature forecasted, it will allow Henriette to traverse over cooler waters, after peaking out as a 75 Kt., Cat 1 storm, to drop back down to TS strength before landfalling along the sparsely populated mid-Baja coastline as a weakening tropical storm on Thursday.
But for now she's still over warm waters and is still organizing and still consolidating. But thankfully, not threatening populated areas.
Worth a quick peek, from the University of Hawaii Weather Server:
http://weather.hawaii.edu/satellite/sata...amp;overlay=off
The ball of convection off to the west is TD Gil, continuing to spin down.
(Don't forget: This server can also be used to view Atlantic basin storms, too.)
More on what's left of Gil and on so-to-be Hurricane Henriette later. Now off to Typhoon Fitow in the WestPac ...
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vpbob21
Weather Guru
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Posts: 115
Loc: Ohio
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Just a few thoughts on our Pacific systems ...
Other than its rather unusual track across the Pacific, Typhoon Fitow has been somewhat of a yawner (not that there's anything wrong with that!). It started out about a week ago looking like it was really going to take off, but it ingested a bunch of dry air and that pretty much choked off its development ... convection just hasn't been able to tighten up around the center and it has just been puttering along at cat 1 / low cat 2 intensity. It's expected to make landfall in Japan probably 80-100 miles west of Tokyo in about 24 hours. Official forecast suggests it could strengthen to a cat 2 storm, so Tokyo figures to get a rough stretch of weather, but probably nothing too destructive.
Closer to the U.S. Hurricane Henriette is about to make landfall on the Mexican coast in a few hours after grazing the southern tip of Baja California yesterday. It was expected to weaken to a tropical storm but the track moved farther right than expected and it spent less time over land. Looking pretty good on satellite this morning with lots of deep convection firing near the center. Main threat appears to be very heavy rains, some of which will likely move northward into the Southwest U.S.
And then we've got the remnants of Felix that have made it a good way across Central America. Final discussion didn't think what's left of it would reach the Pacific, but I'm not so sure. Looking at satellite it appears eastern Guatemala has really been taking a pounding by continuous training thunderstorms, and I fear there could be some deadly mudslides in that area.
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