Last night was a long night for both the residents in the eastern Hawaiian Islands and the forecasters and observers of Iselle. It became quickly apparent that Iselle was slowing down on approach to the eastern shores of the big island. Iselle made landfall numerous hours after the anticipated landfall time, which racked up both the rainfall totals and the damage. As satellite images began to worsen in appearance the radar imagery got just a bit better organized.
You would expect winds to increase, but instead they became very disorganized. As Iselle slowed down to around 10 mph in forward speed, winds were also being funneled through the channels of the islands namely the Alenuihaha or Maui channel. This created a great study topic as a second vorticity maximum developed at the lower levels to the west of the Big Island. There is some dispute where or not this system…
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