Tropical Storm Keli forms and is second cyclone now in central Pacific Ocean

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

HONOLULU (AP) — A hurricane that developed rapidly Monday in the central Pacific Ocean was not expected to cause any issues for Hawaii, a federal meteorologist said, as Hurricane Iona trekked west over warm, open waters.

“It’s pretty high confidence that it’s not going to have any direct impacts on the islands,” said Derek Wroe with the National Weather Service in Honolulu.

Iona is the first named storm of the hurricane season in the central Pacific and emerged Sunday from a tropical depression to become a Category 1 hurricane in roughly a day.

The hurricane is centered well south of Hawaii, however, an indirect impact will be downward pressure winds from the hurricane, creating dry and breezy conditions.

“There’s a lot of upward motion in the hurricane and then there’s usually compensating downward motion,” Wroe said. “That should be the case here as well. So it will be dry, it will be breezy.”

Those were the conditions that were prevalent when Hurricane Dora also passed well south of the islands in August 2023, and the associated winds led to the conditions that exacerbated the deadliest fire in the U.S. in over a century.

The blaze raced through the historic town of Lahaina and resulted in the deaths of 102 people.

He said there are concerns that conditions with Hurricane Iona could be at or near red flag criteria.

“That said … wouldn’t be anything close to what we saw during that time with Hurricane Dora. The situation is just not that strong,” he said.

The pressure gradient created by Hurricane Dora created gusts that clocked in at 50 mph (80 kph) in central Maui and well over 60 mph (96 kph) on the Big Island. There were no instruments in West Maui two years ago to measure wind.

“We don’t expect anything even close to that,” he said, with possible localized gusts of over 40 mph (64 kph) with winds running around 20 mph (32 kph).

On Monday, Iona was about 895 miles (1,440 kilometers) southeast of Honolulu, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. No coastal watches or warnings were in effect. Iona is expected to strengthen more over the next couple of days before weakening around the middle of the week.

The hurricane has maximum sustained winds of about 75 mph (120 kph). It was moving in a generally westward direction at about 10 mph (17 kph).

A second weather system has also formed in the central Pacific. Tropical Depression Two-C is located about 1,140 miles (1,840 kilometers) east-southeast of Honolulu. Maximum sustained winds are around 35 mph (55 kph) and expected to strengthen.

Wroe said he didn’t expect any direct impact from this storm on Hawaii either.

The administrator of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency on Monday hosted a statewide conference call with all counties, during which the National Weather Service provided an assessment and status of the storms.

“All counties are monitoring,” agency spokesperson Kiele Amundson said in an email.

Another indirect impact from these storms could be swells, but Wroe said they are relatively small and moving westward and won’t create anything significant.

However, a large swell is headed toward Hawaii after being generated several hundred miles east of New Zealand.

It’s expected to arrive in Hawaii about Thursday, about the same time the storms pass the state.

“People might wrongly attribute the swell energy to be from these tropical systems, but they’re actually not,” he said.

He anticipates high surf advisory to be issued for the south shores of the Hawaiian Islands, with a surf of 10 feet (3 meters) or higher.

The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Tropical Storm Keli forms and is second cyclone now in central Pacific Ocean

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