Talking the Tropics With Mike: Hurricane WARNING for parts of Hawaii

Aug. 22, 2018 — The "Buresh Bottom Line": Always be prepared!.....First Alert Hurricane Survival Guide... City of Jacksonville Preparedness Guide... Georgia Hurricane Guide.

Watch "Surviving the Storm".....

The Atlantic Basin remains quiet. In fact, there's an overall lack of much cloud cover until the far Eastern Atlantic. Dry air in the mid & upper levels is widespread. I expect to see some changes - with potential storm development - by the first week or so of Sept. The Pacific, on the other hand, remains much more active - see bottom.

Mid & upper level wind shear (enemy of tropical cyclones) analysis (CIMMS). The red lines indicate strong shear......

The Atlantic Basin....

Caribbean:

Gulf of Mexico:

Water vapor imagery (dark blue indicates dry air):

Deep oceanic heat content continues to increase over the Caribbean & Gulf of Mexico as one would expect now that we're in August.....

Sea surface temp. anomalies are below avg. across much of the middle & Eastern Atlantic ....

SE U.S. surface map:

Surface analysis centered on the tropical Atlantic:

Surface analysis of the Gulf:

Caribbean:

In the E. Pacific..... Hurricane "Lane" is a powerful hurricane - reaching Cat. 5 intensity Tue. night (likely has peaked) - southeast of the Hawaiian Islands. Track trends continue to shift northward as a trough of low pressure develops west & northwest of Hawaii helping to pull Lane more northward until the hurricane significantly weakens near the islands due to a combination of marginal sea surface temps., increasing shear & perhaps some land interaction with the island chain. Hurricane WATCHES & WARNINGS have been posted for the majority of the island chain. Lane is expected to move west of the big island by late Thu. & south of Honolulu by late Fri. at which point the trend is forecast to be pretty rapid weakening while the tropical cyclone turns back more to the west. For what it's worth... the GFS has been much better than the European model on depicting the northward move this week. Only one other time has a Cat. 5 hurricane been within 350 miles of Hawaii - John in 1994.

Meanwhile.... the West Pacific is active as well. Typhoon "Cimaron" will move over Japan late this week while typhoon "Soulik" move near & over S. Korea. Both tropical cyclones have peaked but will still produce heavy rain, flooding & gusty winds.