Just when we bid farewell to Flossie, we may get to greet Gil. According to Kristina Pydynowski, AccuWeather senior meteorologist, Hurricane Gil was spinning westward over the eastern Pacific Ocean, and gaining strength on Thursday. It was over 1,000 miles
Just when we bid farewell to Flossie, we may get to greet Gil.
According to Kristina Pydynowski, AccuWeather senior meteorologist, Hurricane Gil was spinning westward over the eastern Pacific Ocean, and gaining strength on Thursday. It was over 1,000 miles west-southwest of the tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula.
“As far as whether Gil follows in the footsteps of once-Tropical Storm Flossie and makes another rare track to Hawaii waters, such a solution cannot be ruled out but is not likely,” Pydynowski wrote.
A more favored scenario, she said, is for Gil to continue on a west-northwest track through the rest of the week, posing only a danger to shipping interests.
“Gil’s status of a hurricane should be brief with a weakening trend expected to commence Friday night as it moves over normally cooler waters,” she wrote.
Gil should eventually track south of Hawaii later next week but may not even be a tropical storm or depression at that time, according to Pydynowski.
“It would be extremely unusual for Gil to track similarly to Flossie and target the Hawaiian islands later next week,” she said.
As discussed during Flossie’s existence, just one tropical storm or hurricane reaching Hawaii in a year is a rare feat in itself. The last such time before Flossie was Hurricane Iniki in 1992, Pydynowski said.
The majority of tropical systems in the eastern and central Pacific move from east to west.
The ones that do approach Hawaii are typically forced to weaken due to the cool waters that lie east of the islands, Pydynowski said.
