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  • 6 weeks ago
A powerful hurricane just off the coast of Mexico is causing flooding problems, and even more flooding rain is in store for Hawaii just weeks after the last tropical impact.
Transcript
00:00We'll keep a close eye on that tropical system that is still far to the east in the name of
00:04tropical depression. Faye fighting back a little bit of convection this afternoon,
00:07but look at this healthy tropical wave exiting the coast of Africa. That's another thing that
00:12we're watching, but beyond Faye, still fighting for its life to hold on this next area of concern
00:18in the East Pacific. We've got a couple of huge storms. Tropical storm Odalis is a geographically
00:26large one with abundant moisture, a huge moisture field there, but Hurricane Polo, this thing
00:31ramped up fiercely last night. Overnight last night, we went from Category 1 to 2 to 4, and
00:37it became a Category 5 storm. Very photogenic there with a well-defined eye. We're also facing
00:43a tropical rainstorm here that was once tropical depression, I think 15E. This one's going to
00:48be bringing tremendous rain to the Hawaiian Islands, especially the Big Island of Hawaii,
00:53but there you can see the circulation of that. There is Polo on the right side there, just a
01:01fierce, fierce storm. Odalis to the left, lots of moisture with this one. It's a tropical storm,
01:07but as we travel farther west, this tropical rainstorm that's going to be impacting the Big
01:12Island of Hawaii, our main concern here is the length of time at which this is going to be lingering
01:19nearby. So here you can see 2 a.m. Friday, 2 a.m. Saturday, 2 a.m. Sunday, 2 a
01:22.m. Monday. It doesn't
01:23move much in that time frame. That's going to put a several days, four or five day window at which
01:29there's abundant tropical moisture slamming into the east side of the Big Island of Hawaii.
01:34So this plume of tropical moisture will be with us for several days. Some of these areas here have
01:39been compromised by Hurricane Lala several weeks ago, and the Big Island took the brunt of that one.
01:45And this one is also going to be a significant danger. We're looking at potential for widespread
01:52areas to see 12 to 18 inches of rain as our most likely scenario, all the way down to the
01:55coastline,
01:568 to 12 inches of rain for the north, south, and east facing coastline of the Big Island.
02:01And our AccuWeather local storm acts for this storm, a very dangerous up to 38 inches potential.
02:07So here you can see we go up to the third tier, high risk to lives and property. This storm,
02:13even though it may not officially have a name, it probably will get named eventually.
02:17This is a storm with an AccuWeather real impact scale rating of 1. So the AccuWeather real impact
02:22scale rating system for hurricanes indicating big problems there. Look at Polo, though. Look at the
02:26well-defined eye. This one is also basically stationary just south of Mexico. Thankfully,
02:32it's far enough south that the eye wall, even the outer eye wall, is over water and not over land.
02:38But this is a dangerous, dangerous storm here. Category 5 hurricane drifting north, barely,
02:44eventually northwest, hooking it, staying out to sea, barely. But it's a big enough storm. We're
02:49going to see very heavy rain flooding there for the Mexican coast. And here we are into the weekend,
02:54Category 4, Category 3, Category 2. Off to the west of Cabo San Lucas on the Baja California
03:00Peninsula of Mexico. It will still be a hurricane and a tropical storm into early next week. And again,
03:05it's just a tenacious storm. Thankfully, the worst of this is offshore. But again,
03:10it's a big enough storm. We're looking at 60 to 80 mile per hour gusts south of Guadalajara.
03:13And it's a large enough storm that we're going to see a widespread four to eight inches of rain
03:18from Acapulco northwest to south of Guadalajara. So big concerns here as well. And overall,
03:24this storm, Polo, even though it's a Category 5 via the Saffir-Simpson scale, the worst of that's
03:30offshore. So this storm has an AccuWeather real impact scale rating for hurricanes of 1
03:33for the Mexican coastline.

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