Hurricane Hone hits Hawaii with flooding, damaging winds | LiveNOW from FOX

want to thank you all for joining us on this Sunday. My name is Kal lahara. We do want to turn our attention now though. to another story that we have been following very very closely and we're talking of course about hurricane hon. So earlier on Sunday, it passed just south of Hawaii. winds topping 85 miles per hour. And up to a foot of rain was seen in parts of the island. for more on this. I would like to bring to the conversation. Now. Ian Morrison from the national Weather Service. over in Honolulu, Ian, good to see you and thanks for joining us today. I'd like you to start by just telling our viewers a little bit about the impact that this hurricane had And what residents down on the ground. are seeing Uh, good afternoon. Corral Uh, yes as you can see from your the image behind me and the image you were showing earlier. We do have a quite a bit of rain coming. in to the big island of Hawaii and that's our southernmost Island. and we are seeing quite a few impacts with that. flooding throughout the day. today. we've had, um, um, several road closures power outages. we're seeing rainfall totals so far. in the 10 to 20 inch. range and we do expect rain to continue. through today and the afternoon with um, another 3 to 6 inches possible for areas on the eastern part of the Big island. So our concern is focused their we are having some strong winds over the rest of the islands. We've had a power outages, across Oahu and in Maui County. so we're seeing some, uh, strong wind gusts where the rainfall totals are not. nearly as bad as on the big island, but we do have about 4 to 6 inches. on sections of Maui and 1 to 2 inches on. Oahu. so, just last year, we were keeping track, of course of the historic wildfire that the town of La Hina experience 1 of the deadliest that the US has seen in over a century. and that fire was fueled by Hurricane force winds. this time around, though, the red flag warnings have been uh, put on the back burner no longer. there for Hawaii, because of this. hurricane. But what's different so, yes, we did have the devastating fires. uh, last year at the beginning of August both in La Hina and we had in other parts of Maui and the Big Island. And this 1 is, it's uh a lot different. uh, this storm. kame is much closer to the islands and as we're talking about that, that rainfall and all of that moisture associated with the circulation. that kind of keeps the moisture in the air Keeps the fuels like grasses and anything else that will burn It keeps them moist, and doesn't allow for that dramatic. Kind of a critical fire weather. situation. to arrive last year, we had Hurricane Dora passing um, hundreds of miles to the south of the island. So we didn't have that moisture that the hurricanes usually bring in. So I guess the next question would be when do you expect that these red flag warnings are going to once again be issued for Hawaii. no, we did have the red flag, warnings up yesterday. Ahead of the storm and all of the moisture. It brings so, we did see the winds yesterday, but it wasn't quite dry enough for it to reach that critical fire weather. criteria. So, uh, thankfully, we didn't have a lot of um, a fire activity yesterday but there was the potential for it and we had the red flag out. as for the next uh, potential time. We have a red Flag Warning. It's it's not in the foreseeable forecast. it's we don't see much of, uh, any risk in the next. 7 days or so, but you never know what comes down the um, In the future After that, we do have another storm out in the East Pacific. uh hurricane Gilma. which we're watching for our next potential storm. That's where I wanted to go next with this following question, which is Hurricane Gilma. We know that it increased to a category 4 overnight on Saturday So tell us a little bit about its track and what kind of impacts that's expected to have possibly for Hawaii? Right, as you said, hurricane Gila did intensifying. quite impressively yesterday and overnight and it is still in that the East Pacific and it will cross into the Central Pacific sometime in the next uh, day or 2. But we do expect to see some rapid weakening of Gilma over the next few days. So, as it passes into the Central Pacific which is our area of responsibility, will take it over from the National Hurricane Center. The forecast and right now it is looking like, it'll be a tropical storm. when it enters our Basin and then into a depression, as it reaches kind of the area of Hawaii. the forecast is still um, that's out 5 or 6 days from now. So the uncertainty is pretty high. but right now Gilma looks like it'll bring some beneficial rains to the island. So, we are looking at That forecasts and we're actually hopeful for that forecasts because we do. need this rain that's coming in Something interesting that you mentioned with that last answer, was that hurricane Gilma as we have been discussing is a category for Hurricane right now. but it's expected to weaken by the time it gets close to Hawaii Now I thought that the more a hurricane or a storm like that was in the ocean. the stronger that it got Why is that not the case? this time? With gilmas forecast. in We have a couple factors going on in the intensity. of a hurricane such as Gilma. Uh, the first thing that we look at is sea surface temperature and um, what call the ocean heat content. put it in. The different words, and that is looking at the temperature of the water is providing the energy for the hurricane. And in this case, that is in place where we have the warm ocean waters underneath the storm, but what the Hurricane Center is looking at for this. weakening is wind shear. where we're getting wins. at the surface being different than the Winds of and in the middle of the storm. So what happens is the hurricane likes to be standing straight up with all the winds pushing it forward in 1 Direction, But when you get into a wind shear situation, you get wins. above the storm and at the top of the atmosphere pushing the storm in 1 Direction. and then at the lower atmosphere pushing in a different direction direction and you get what's known as wind shear. it tends to tear the the system apart and it weakens to keep backing off of that last answer, we have been talking about the fact that we're in the thick of Atlantic hurricane season over the last several weeks. how do Atlantic hurricanes and also the ones that form in the Pacific for example. differ if at all uh, they they're really the the same animal. I mean that the Atlantic hurricanes form in the same type of environment. you want the the warm ocean waters. You want the winds to be. You don't want to see that. uh, vertical wind shear, So, there's the factors involved in creating and maintaining hurricanes in both basins are the same. Just showing some footage here from Hawaii, a bit earlier today. They got some of those waves that you can see crashing there on the coast. and we do appreciate your time here, Anything else that you'd like to add to our viewers Before I Let You Go. uh, this thing, we're in the peak of hurricane season in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. So if you haven't prepared for your, hurricane kits to have food Water medications, and your evacuation routes planned out, please do that now. Always important to mention that, especially when these storms can be so powerful. and sometimes even deadly. Ian Morrison from the national Weather Service in Holland Lulu. We appreciate your time talk soon. All right. Thank you. I do want to bring up a tweet here for our viewers from the national Weather Service in Honolulu. It says here is the 1100 am update on Hurricane hon, tropical storm conditions are expected to continue on the big island into the early afternoon winds and rain, May gradually diminish over th