At 5 a.m. HST Thursday, Hurricane Lowell's center sat near 13.5 north, 157.2 west, about 450 miles south-southwest of Hilo and 605 miles south-southeast of Lihue, moving west at 10 mph with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph and a central pressure of 945 mb. [1] It is a Category 4 hurricane. The National Hurricane Center said it is expected to remain a major hurricane for the next several days. There are no coastal watches or warnings in effect. "Interests in the Hawaiian Islands should monitor the progress of Lowell." [1]
Wednesday's two-basin file refused to fuse an East Texas flood after a weak landfall with a Central Pacific swell, and refused to write a Hawaiian landfall. Thursday does not change that split. Edouard is a different basin. Hurricane Lala's Hawaii Island recovery is a different storm. Lowell is still a swell hazard, not a landfall verdict.
Hurricane-force winds extend up to 40 miles from the center. Tropical-storm-force winds extend up to 140 miles. [1] A general west motion with a gradual decrease in forward speed is expected for a couple of days, then a turn toward the northwest and north this weekend. [1] Swells generated by Lowell are spreading northward and will affect portions of the islands for several days. Those swells are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip currents. [1] That is the land hazard NHC named. It did not name a watch.
Wednesday's advisory had Lowell near 155 mph, with further strengthening possible, including Category 5. Thursday's 140 mph is still Category 4. Use NHC over any Cat-5 superlative that did not survive the 5 a.m. package. Some fluctuations in intensity are expected. Remaining a major hurricane is the forecast. A Hawaii landfall is not. [1]
Hawaii News Now's Ben Gutierrez, updating Thursday, put the other storm in the error bars. Hurricane Karina, still a major hurricane to the east, adds forecast spread at what National Weather Service meteorologist Stephen Parker called "a very critical time," when Lowell could be quite close to one of the main islands. [2] The latest track moves the storm closer to Kauai. Iniki, in 1992, turned north toward the Garden Isle from the south and remains the most destructive storm in Hawaii history. Walaka took a similar path in 2018 and stayed far enough away that the islands felt the swell. [2] Parker said the average error beyond 120 hours is "in the neighborhood of 100 miles on either side of a line, so we just don't know where it's going to go yet." [2] Social-media spaghetti is not NHC. "People do have a tendency in the big wide world of the internet to take the most sensational thing they can do and put it out there for clicks," Parker said. "It's not a time to panic yet." [2]
Weather accounts will treat a Kauai hook as Iniki again. NHC's Thursday record is no watches, a wide-error turn, and a swell that can kill a swimmer now. Those are two different sentences. Only one of them is on the advisory.
-- DARA OSEI, London