00:00Well, we are facing another threat in Hawaii. One week, almost to the day, within half a day
00:06of the one-week anniversary of Lala, bringing incredible damage to the big island with severe
00:13flooding. We had over three feet of rain in some areas, and there were some very strong winds as
00:17well. The flooding and the mudslides, though, have led the greatest amount of destruction in some
00:22areas. Lala, still a powerful storm, a hurricane, passing through some of the reefs way northwest
00:28of the primary Hawaiian islands, and now our attention is drawn to what is becoming Tropical
00:35Storm Mocha as we watch this next big swirl. It's actually geographically larger than Lala has been,
00:42even though it's a little bit earlier in its formative stages. You can see the circulation
00:47here that has tightened up, and it became a tropical depression earlier, and now we're watching this
00:54transition to a tropical storm here as we get into the end of the workweek. Lala, though, still a
01:00cohesive storm, and again, it feels like it's really far north, at least to me, but then as we kind
01:05of
01:05just keep ourselves honest and look at the actual latitude, it's way south still, equal to the southern
01:11part of the Baja California Peninsula, so it's still way south of Southern California. It has still some
01:15time before it gets over that cooler water later this weekend, but the future is about this storm
01:22east-southeast of Hawaii, and we're going to be watching that. So a quick look at Lala. These little
01:28spits of land here are actually still Hawaiian real estate here. Some of these are uninhabited, but
01:33they're areas where research is done and so forth, and there are some reefs and some sandbars and things
01:38like that, but Lala is just moving out over that area. So we head back to the wider view, and
01:44we're
01:44looking at a significant impact here in the Big Island this weekend, probably Sunday, associated
01:51with what is becoming Tropical Storm, and we expect actually even Hurricane Mocha into the
01:58Central Pacific. So let's get into the models, then I'm going to come back to a more comprehensive
02:03view of what we're looking at here, and we're going to be dealing with, again, a lot of different
02:11concerns here into parts of the Pacific, but mainly focusing on what's becoming Mocha.
02:20Just to get your bearings, here's Hawaii, here is Lala, and here, even though it's not as tight,
02:28it's not as organized, that is what's becoming Tropical Storm Mocha. And as we watch this spin,
02:36this is the GFS. We're going to look at a few different models. It's a little more likely to stay
02:40just
02:41farther south. Now, the GFS actually doesn't really ramp this up in a severe way. In fact,
02:46it actually shears this apart with, again, more wind from the northwest permeating a little farther
02:54south, kind of inflicting some wind shear on this system. And here's the trough that may interrupt it.
03:00You can see, we can connect the dots there. I don't think it's going to be quite that
03:05impacted that quickly by this trough. I suspect we're still going to be having a cohesive storm
03:11pass to the south. The upper level flow then kind of does keep a remnant of Mocha there as a
03:18kind of
03:18a fledgling system that regenerates then farther west. I think the GFS probably overstates the impact
03:23of that trough. Let's go to the European. In the European's case, that trough is a little farther north,
03:30and we don't see as much of a reflection of that down to the south. So just to go apples
03:35to apples,
03:35I'm going to get rid of this intermediate thing, so we can just toggle back and forth.
03:39Here's the European on Saturday night, and here's the GFS Saturday night. And the difference,
03:46it's subtle, but there is a little bit more of a reflection of that trough with some of the wind
03:51a little farther south here with the GFS. And with the European, I just don't see that as much.
03:57The wind gets really light, five knots well north of Hawaii. Meanwhile, in the GFS,
04:02you have still 10 to 15 knots of wind. Not much, but it's a difference. It's a difference nonetheless.
04:10And as we watch this, you can see that the European does keep it more cohesive.
04:15And similar to La La, it passes pretty close to the Big Island, but south. And La La was,
04:20the center of the circulation was 30 miles south of the tip of the Big Island. This might be a
04:24little
04:24further south. Let's look at the surface forecast here. And here's the GFS. And remember, I said that
04:30the GFS was kind of inflicted a little bit more by the shear from that disturbance to the north.
04:36And the GFS does keep it together, but man, it's a minimal tropical system here.
04:421012 is approximately the average barometric pressure globally. So this would be barely stronger
04:49than just the mean atmospheric pressure. It'd be a very, very weak system passing well south of
04:55Hawaii with some showers. It would bring some showers to the east side. Let's go to the European.
04:59Here, it's a stronger system passing closer to the Big Island. And just for a more comprehensive view,
05:06here's the Canadian. Here's a Canadian. We're tracking the Canadian. This brings it east of the
05:11islands. That's kind of a different storyline. It fragments it. The trough impacts it. This huge area of
05:18high pressure then is a factor as well as it steers the southern part of the remnant of that storm
05:25west.
05:26It kind of chunks it apart. But the major moisture field there tied to the Canadian actually pulls
05:32farther north, which I don't think that's the likely scenario. I don't think that's the most likely
05:37scenario. And then as we go to the JMA, this is the Japanese model. It keeps it mainly south as
05:43a weak
05:44system. And then the UK Met keeps it south as a very weak system here. So as we move forward
05:51here,
05:52wind gust potential, it's more limited with this. And I'm going to show you our forecast for winds.
05:56If the European verifies, this would be a windier scenario with some gusts of 40 to 50 miles per hour,
06:03maybe stronger than that over the summits. But let's go back to our forecast here. And again,
06:10we're forecasting this to become a hurricane and then weaken a bit because of some impacts from
06:14that wind shear when it passes near south of Hawaii. If it does take the track of the European,
06:22though, there's a likelihood of 8 to 12 inches of rain on the big island. But given the trend,
06:27wind is less likely to be a big storyline. Still, if you've got debris laying around 40 to 60 mile
06:32per hour, gusts can cause trouble. So this storm would have an AccuWeather real impact scale rating of
06:371. Still significant impacts, mainly because of the residual debris on the ground from Lala and the
06:44ongoing recovery.
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