According to the National Hurricane Cente, the tropical storm Erick is expected to strengthen into the eastern Pacific Ocean’s latest hurricane as it approaches Hawaii this week. The weather system organized into a tropical depression about 1,410 miles southwest of Baja California early Sunday morning before rapidly strengthening into a tropical storm.
The National Hurricane Center said in a weather advisory, “Maximum sustained winds are near 40 mph (65 km/h) with higher gusts. Strengthening is forecast, and Erick is expected to become a hurricane by late Monday with continued strengthening through Tuesday.”
CNN meteorologist Robert Shackleford said that the storm is tracking west toward Hawaii at 16 mph, and is expected to affect the state around Friday. He further added that while it will most likely approach Hawaii as a tropical storm with weaker winds, it’ll still bring a lot of rainfall. But it’s too far out to determine what the rainfall potential will be.
Alan Reppert, a senior meteorologist for Accuweather also said, “Erick would still be almost a week out, so there’s a lot of uncertainty on the exact track. Any slight change in that track could really affect any rainfall we see in Hawaii. At least for now, it looks like Erick is still likely to be off to the south of the Big Island. For now, we’re looking at that push off to the south. If that is in fact the case, we may see much less rainfall from this than if it was farther north and moving over the island.”
According to another advisory issued by the National Hurricane Center, another tropical depression has formed behind Erick and is also likely to become a hurricane in the next two to three days. The tropical depression Seven-E, was off the southern coast of Mexico Sunday morning and moving about 21 miles per hour west-northwest.
Reppert also said, “That’s even farther east than Erick is right now. That could be another thing to keep an eye on for Hawaii, and how that moves westward over the next week.”
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