Atlantic hurricane season expected to intensify as another storm approaches Hawaii in the Pacific
The Atlantic has been calm recently, but there are three named storms in the Pacific right now, all with paths close to Hawaii.
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00:00We enjoyed a nice recent break from tropical activity in the Atlantic.
00:03But as AccuWeather's lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva explains,
00:09activity is about to ramp back up.
00:13Yeah, I think we're going to be seeing big changes in the Atlantic coming at the end of
00:16August. Starting probably around August 27th, I think one of the big factors that's been kind of
00:22inhibiting tropical development, at least for most of the month of August, is going to start to go
00:26away. And that is the African dust. That's the hair and dry air that's been coming across the
00:31Atlantic and kind of choking off these tropical waves. Thinking by the end of August, I think a
00:36lot of that dust will start to wane. And so as we approach the peak of the hurricane season,
00:42which is September 10th, we're going to start to see a lot more of these robust waves coming off
00:46of the coast of Africa. And without that dry air, or at least less of it, I think they're going to
00:51have a better shot of developing.
00:55All right. Well, the Atlantic has been quiet. The Pacific has been active. Hode brought heavy
01:01flooding, rain, and gusty winds to Hawaii. Some of that flooding was pretty nasty out there.
01:07We've been dealing with, again, a lot of concerns about flooding there, especially for the Big
01:12Island earlier this weekend. The rain has been exiting, has been pulling away to the west here,
01:19thankfully. So we're getting a bit of a break there. We have a radar view, and some of this
01:23is supplemented by satellite data for the area around the west side of Hawaii. And you can see,
01:27again, where the heaviest rain and the flooding had been, it was mainly over the Big Island. We
01:31had some rain off to the north. But overall, rain tied to Hone is exiting, and we're in better
01:37shape there, at least in the short term. But we want to jump to the Atlantic here, because a lot
01:42of us are very interested in how the next month is going to progress, especially with the southeast
01:49coast, the Carolina coast, Texas coast in mind here, and in between, Louisiana as well. We've
01:54had five named storms so far, and we're right around average, really. We typically would see
01:59our fifth named storm form on August 22nd. That was four days ago. So we're not ahead or behind
02:05of the average for the number of storms that we've seen. We did see a lot of energy with Debbie.
02:12Debbie was an unusually strong storm for a long period of time this early in the season. Typically,
02:17our third hurricane forms, at least the average statistic lands on September 7th, and the first
02:23major hurricane would land on September 1st. We've already had three hurricanes and one major
02:28hurricane, so we're marginally ahead of average there for those metrics. We're going to keep our
02:32eye out for a series of tropical waves, which are kind of drawing the troughs here on the map
02:36across the eastern Atlantic. Things are getting more active. We have a lot of dry air, though,
02:40a lot of dry air in the short term, and even arguably into places off to the west near the
02:45Turks and Caicos. So we're not expecting anything too soon in the Atlantic, but we will be looking
02:50for one of those tropical waves to enter this area here this coming weekend, Saturday, Sunday,
02:56Monday, a week from now. We have a low chance, again, a low chance of development here off to
03:01the east of the Caribbean. So again, that's the next thing that we'll be watching in the Atlantic
03:06Basin. But as we do take you back into the Pacific, just because, again, this has been an area where
03:10there's been more activity, even though it's a little bit lower impact moving away from Hawaii,
03:14Hone is moving away, and that's not going to bring any additional significant impacts,
03:18although there are still some big waves that we've inherited from the past few days from that near
03:22miss, or at least you could call it a direct hit, at least even though we didn't see landfall,
03:26because the rain really intensified. And look at that waterfall in Hilo. Elsewhere to the east of
03:31Hawaii, here is Gilma. Gilma is a hurricane, and this is going to continue to move west. Gilma is
03:36a Category 2 hurricane now, but look at this. We're going to go back down to a tropical storm by 8 a.m.
03:40Wednesday. Tropical depression as it passes actually north of Hawaii this weekend. Remember,
03:46Hone passed to the south, but overall, Gilma is going to be passing to the north as a weaker storm.
03:52And beyond that, we have Hector on the map too, so a lot of action. Hector is a tropical storm
03:57and will remain a tropical storm. This will take a path kind of halfway between where Hone and
04:02Gilma will be moving, but also similar to Gilma, we're looking at this weakening to a tropical
04:07depression and tropical rainstorm losing its wind energy before it makes that close push into Hawaii.