00:00Joining us right now, lead hurricane expert Alex DeSilva.
00:03Alex, before we talk about the Eastern Pacific, let's talk to you about the Atlantic season.
00:08We've had three named storms so far.
00:11We're running a little bit below historical averages.
00:14And you and the team has made a minor change to the hurricane forecast in the Atlantic basin.
00:21Yeah, indeed we have.
00:22Again, we've been talking about the potential of a super El Nino,
00:25pretty much the majority of the hurricane season,
00:27that we could potentially see that at the end of the hurricane season.
00:30And the chances of that continue, continue to go up.
00:33And so as a result, based on that information,
00:36based on those increasing chances of a strong to super El Nino,
00:39we're going to have to lower some of the numbers here.
00:41The named storms, the hurricanes and the major hurricanes have all been brought down a little bit.
00:47And that's due to the fact that typically during these strong El Nino events,
00:51you have a lot more hostile winds in the Atlantic basin.
00:54And that can really disrupt the organization of tropical storms and hurricanes.
00:58And so you can see that there.
00:59We're now forecasting eight to 11 named storms, three to four hurricanes, one to two hurricanes,
01:05or one to two majors.
01:06But the number that has not changed, this is important, is that right-hand column there.
01:11The number of direct U.S. impacts, we're still forecasting a total of three to five.
01:16We've seen two so far with Arthur and Bertha, and we can expect another one to three for the rest
01:23of the season.
01:24You know, when you look at the number of named storm, the historical average, it's 14 named storm.
01:30When you look at the curve of the hurricane season, Alex,
01:34during the month of August and September, of those 14 storms that we typically get,
01:40eight of them occur during those months.
01:42So we're in the heart of the season.
01:43Indeed we are.
01:45And we were tracking a couple of waves last week that we thought had a really good chance of developing.
01:49But what happened was they ran right into that wall of wind shear, right into those hostile winds.
01:54We thought maybe we could get another one or two last week.
01:57Did not happen because they ran straight into that wall of wind shear,
02:01and they croaked as they were coming across the Atlantic basin.
02:03They never got a name.
02:05So that is another reason that led us to lowering these numbers.
02:08We're seeing the strong wind shear in reality, essentially, ripping these waves apart as they come from Africa.
02:16So, you know, at the end of the day, it just comes down to math.
02:20We're coming towards the end of August.
02:22We've only seen three named storms.
02:23Maybe we can get another one or two by the end of the month.
02:26But that's what led us to that decision.
02:28You can see out there right now basically nothing going on across the Atlantic basin.
02:33We just had a new tropical wave come across Africa and come out over the ocean yesterday.
02:38We're going to be watching that one for possible development here.
02:42But, again, it's a low chance, and it's got a long way to go if it's going to have that
02:46development chance, you know,
02:48come to fruition here because it's still going to be battling that dry air and that wind shear.
02:53But the time frame to watch it, August 22nd to 24th.
02:57Then we're watching another tropical wave that follows that one, and that, too, it's a little farther north, Alex.
03:04But right now it doesn't look all that optimistic.
03:07And you were talking about the math.
03:08Take a look at this development area.
03:10This takes us into the end of August.
03:13Again, another low chance here.
03:15This will be a tropical wave that will be coming off of Africa later on this week or this weekend.
03:21This will be the time frame to watch it, the 26th to the 30th.
03:24So now you're into that last week of August here as it's going to be coming across the Atlantic.
03:29But, again, it's going to be facing many challenges as it does so with that really strong wind shear and
03:34a lot of dry air.
03:35So that's why we have a low chance on it right now.
03:37We still have to watch it as we're starting to approach the peak of the season, which is September 10th.
03:42So every wave we have to watch.
03:44But so far this season, those waves have had a lot of trouble.
03:47So far this season, it's been busy in the eastern and central Pacific.
03:52And we want to take you there right now.
03:54You can still see Lala well now to the west of Hawaii.
04:00But there's a new area that we're concerned about.
04:03Yeah, you can see Lala there in the top left of your screen there, how small of a system it
04:07is.
04:07Moving off to the north, no more bother to Hawaii.
04:09But look at this massive blob of showers and thunderstorms here to the southeast of Hawaii.
04:15That's associated with a very, very large tropical wave here that we do expect to develop later on this week.
04:21Likely to become a tropical storm by week's end.
04:24And it's going to be tracking off to the north and west here through the weekend.
04:28So the timeline on when we could potentially start to see impacts in the Hawaiian Islands again would be the
04:33end of this weekend into early next week.
04:36It's going to be moving over some very warm water.
04:38Like I said, we have a high risk of development on this one.
04:41And then the big question is just how close to Hawaii is it going to get?
04:46It doesn't look like right now it's going to get as close to Hawaii as Lala did.
04:51Things can still change.
04:52We have several days to watch it.
04:54But it could still be close enough where we could see some rain impacts, especially on the Big Island.
05:00So they definitely don't need to see that right now.
05:02But we want to let people know that there is definitely a risk of impacts on the Hawaiian Islands, unfortunately,
05:09once again, end of this weekend and into the start of next week.
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