Tropical Storm Ivette is picking up strength as it moves toward Hawaii but forecasters think it’ll lose most of its punch before it makes it here sometime late next week. ADVERTISING Tropical Storm Ivette is picking up strength as it
Tropical Storm Ivette is picking up strength as it moves toward Hawaii but forecasters think it’ll lose most of its punch before it makes it here sometime late next week.
At 5 p.m. Thursday, the storm was about 1,800 miles east-southeast of Hilo, packing maximum sustained winds of 50 mph and moving west at 14 mph.
“It’s still about a week away before it would impact us, at this point,” said Matt Foster, a National Weather Service forecaster in Honolulu. “We’re still kind of watching it and it’s still going to come into an area of cooler waters and also a high (wind) shear environment before it gets here. I’m thinking it’s not going to be much by the time it gets here, but it’s still going to be a big ball of moisture when it approaches the state. Wherever it lands, it’s probably going to bring a lot of rain with it but it’s probably not going to be a tropical (storm) system; it should be a remnant (low-pressure) system at that point.”
Ivette started farther south than most of the other tropical cyclones during this Pacific hurricane season and its possible arrival in the second week of August is eerily reminiscent of Tropical Storm Iselle, which hit the Big Island at just below hurricane strength. Iselle wreaked havoc on the Big Island in 2014, downing power and telephone lines, snapping and uprooting albizia trees, damaging structures and causing problems with Puna polling places in the primary elections.
“We think (Ivette) will be weaker,” Foster said. “Iselle was still pretty strong when it hit. Ivette is going to go over some cooler water. It’s over warmer water now. The forecast has it weakening quite a bit once it crosses over into (the Central Pacific) basin, (longitude) 140 West. It should weaken by half over a two-day period.”
Ivette is forecast to reach hurricane strength by the time it crosses into the Central Pacific, but is expected to start weakening shortly thereafter.
“A lot is going to depend on what’s going to happen over the next few days with Ivette. It was anticipated to strengthen but it’s been rather slow to strengthen,” Foster said. “There are still a lot of variables that can happen. It’s still almost 2,000 miles away. Even though the (computer forecast) models are bringing it kind of close to us, we’ll have to wait and see on that.”
The remnants of the former Tropical Storm Howard should reach the islands late Saturday, Foster said.
“It’s lost all of its tropical (storm) characteristics,” Foster said. “It’s not going to strengthen or anything like that. … It looks like it’s going to hit the center part of the state, but it doesn’t take much to interact with the sea breeze you get on the Big Island. So I’d say any island has the possibility of heavy rain or thunderstorms, at this point.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
