HONOLULU – With Hurricane Horn passing on Monday and Hurricane Girma slowly approaching from the eastern Pacific, residents across Hawaii are taking steps to prepare for the impacts of back-to-back hurricanes.
In Lower Puna, just south of Hilo on the Big Island, Laurie Lyon-Makaimoku and her family removed the tarps from their outdoor garage and retrieved their camping stove and propane tanks. They also picked avocados and breadfruit from the trees on their property in preparation for Girma’s gusts.
“It rained heavily,” she told USA Today. “By Sunday afternoon, everything started to calm down, but it rained all day on Friday. We were in the rain preparing for the storm, but the worst was on Saturday.”
Horn strengthened to a Category 1 hurricane as it moved south of the Big Island early Sunday, dumping more than a foot of rain on parts of the island and up to 18 inches in some areas. Some major roads were flooded, waterways swollen, and thousands of homes and businesses lost power, but no major damage was reported. By nightfall, Horn had weakened to a tropical storm and moved west of the Hawaiian Islands.
Track Hurricane Girma: See the latest details and the projected path of the Pacific storm
Several beaches across the Big Island were closed Monday and five public schools canceled classes due to power outages and dangerous road conditions, according to the County of Hawaii website. The school Lion Makaimoku’s children attend was closed Monday after a tree fell on the main campus, causing power outages.
“We’re moving into the restoration phase,” Hawaii County Mayor Mitch Ross said in a Facebook Live broadcast Sunday afternoon. Ross said emergency crews will be assessing damage across the islands this week as line crews restore power and officials begin preparing for Hurricane Girma. Power outages had been reduced to just 2,000 locations statewide by mid-morning, according to poweroutage.us.
“With Girma coming up… this one is over but it’ll be good to start preparing for the next one,” Ross said.
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Hurricane Girma predicted to hit Hawaiian Islands
As Tropical Storm Horn continues to move away from Hawaii’s Big Island, forecasters and local officials are closely monitoring Hurricane Girma.
Girma is still more than 1,100 miles east of Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii and is expected to bring showers, thunderstorms and gusty winds to the state later this week. As of 11 a.m. Hawaii time, the storm’s sustained winds had increased to 110 mph, making it a Category 2 storm on the verge of becoming a major hurricane.
Forecasters expect the storm to pass just north of the Hawaiian Islands, and stressed that Girma’s impacts will depend largely on how close it gets to the state. On its current path, Girma is expected to weaken into a tropical storm later this week, according to AccuWeather.
“The combination of the two tropical storms will cause prolonged periods of rough seas and waves in the islands, posing dangers to boarders, swimmers and small craft,” AccuWeather said of Horn and Girma.
The impact on Oahu is small, but it has changed the way we think.
On Oahu, the most populous of the Hawaiian islands and home to Honolulu, Klarna Cannon didn’t lose power but was hit by strong winds that forced her family to clear everything in their yard to keep them safe.
“I feel like we’ve done as much preparation as we can,” she said. “I wouldn’t say it’s normal, but it’s normal in Hawaii to a certain extent. We have hurricane season all the time.”
Oahu is more than 130 miles northwest of the Big Island, which was hit directly by Horn. Though Oahu was not in the storm’s direct path, lessons learned from last August’s tragedy on Maui are fresh in people’s minds, where Hurricane Dora’s powerful winds sparked devastating fires that destroyed the town of Lahaina.
“There’s an added urgency to this because what happened on Maui last year means we need to take this more seriously than just regular, everyday hurricane weather,” Cannon said.
Where is Tropical Storm Horn?
Tropical Storm Horn was located 280 miles west-southwest of Honolulu and 240 miles southwest of Lihue, Hawaii, late Monday morning, according to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu.
The storm had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph and tropical force winds extending 90 miles outward from the center. The storm continues to spiral westward at 13 mph and away from Hawaii, and is expected to weaken over the next few days, according to the hurricane center.
Experts say it’s extremely rare for consecutive storms to pass near Hawaii.
If Hurricane Girma hits Hawaii by Sunday, it will be the first time in more than 30 years that two named storms within a week will pass within 300 miles of the state.
The last time back-to-back named storms struck the islands was in September 1992, when Tropical Storm Orlean struck three days after Hurricane Iniki, the most powerful storm to hit Hawaii, according to AccuWeather.
Storms don’t have to hit Hawaii directly to wreak havoc: Last year, Hurricane Dora sparked the deadliest wildfires in the US in a century.
Forecasters had worried Horn’s winds would have a similar impact to Dora’s, especially with large swaths of the islands in relentless drought, but the storm brought enough rain to calm fears and wildfire warnings were lifted in parts of Hawaii Island.
Tropical Storm Hector expected to strengthen in the eastern Pacific
To the east of Hurricane Girma is Tropical Storm Hector, the most recent storm to form in the Pacific Ocean.
The storm is expected to continue moving west toward Hawaii over the next few days, according to the National Hurricane Center. Officials are closely tracking the storm, but it’s still unclear how close it will get to Hawaii.
As of 11 a.m. Hawaii time Monday, Hector was more than 1,000 miles west-southwest of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula. The storm was moving west at 10 mph and had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph, according to the Hurricane Center.
The storm is expected to strengthen and move toward the Central Pacific Basin early this week as wind shear weakens. Hector’s strengthening is expected to be limited by areas of dry air and enhanced wind shear, according to the Hurricane Center.
Understanding Hurricane Basins and Names
Tropical cyclones and hurricanes form in what meteorologists call “basins.” The one Americans are most familiar with is the Atlantic Basin, which includes storms that form in the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea. The majority of storms that affect the United States are in the Atlantic Basin.
There are two basins in the Pacific Ocean that produce storms that affect the United States: the Eastern Pacific and the Central Pacific. Storms in the Eastern and Central Pacific rarely affect land and usually move out to sea, but they can affect the west coast of Mexico, the southwestern United States, and Hawaii.
According to NOAA, the Atlantic and eastern Pacific basins have six-year lists of names to identify storms that are updated and maintained by the World Meteorological Organization. The central Pacific basin has its own list of Hawaiian names.
Storms often move from the Eastern Pacific Basin to the Central Pacific Basin, in which case the storm keeps its original name, as will happen with Hurricane Girma later this week. Only if a storm first forms in the Central Pacific Basin will it be given a Hawaiian name, like Hurricane Horn.
− Doyle Rice