Light rain began falling in Central and East Maui Tuesday morning as Hurricane Madeline continued heading west at 10 miles per hour toward the Hawaiian Islands with maximum sustained winds of 120 miles per hour.
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This false-colored infrared image of Hurricane Lester from the AIRS instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite shows powerful storms with cold cloud top temperatures (purple) surrounding the eye on August 30 at 6:29 a.m. EDT (10:29 UTC).
Hurricane Madeline is expected to pass near Hawaii around midweek, USA weather forecasters said Monday, possibly wreaking havoc with a planned visit by President Barack Obama and other dignitaries.
At 8 a.m. HST (1800 UTC), the center of Hurricane Madeline was located by aircraft near latitude 19.2 North, longitude 148.7 West. Madeline is moving toward the west near 10 miles per hour (17 km/h).
To watch the 10-minute footage of the three hurricanes shot by NASA’s ISS click on the video shown below. The warning means that hurricane conditions are expected within the specified area.
So close, in fact, that the Big Island was put under a hurricane watch on Monday, and forecasters said more watches may be needed for some of the other islands.
Tropical storm conditions could also extend to Maui.
Much closer to home of the US mainland are Tropical Depression (has winds sustained at 30-38 mph) Eight and Nine.
By Tuesday morning, the centre of the storm was approximately 445 miles east of Hilo, the largest town on the Big Island, moving closer at around 10mph.
Following closely on Madeline’s heels is Hurricane Lester, which also wields Category 3 windspeeds and is slowly gaining ground on its sister storm, moving east at 14 miles per hour.
Hurricane Lester, now in the eastern Pacific, may impact Hawaii over the Labor Day weekend, KHNL said. All were major hurricanes but all dissipated before making it to the Big Island. The forecast now calls for Lester to miss the islands directly, pushing just to the north, but the entire island chain is still in the forecast “cone of uncertainty”. Madeline was packing top sustained winds of 125 miles per hour and moving at 10 miles per hour, it added. The storm should move into the Gulf and could strengthen into a name storm. Given the elevated terrain of the islands, the rainfall, which could reach 12 inches, may cause risky mudslides and flash flooding. (Iselle hit hardest as a tropical storm, but the others were barely tropical depressions.) This was due to largely to cool ocean currents, which typically surround the Island.
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Beachgoers, boat captains and business owners warily waited for the storm to wash out one of the summer’s last busy weeks.
