WILL HURRICANE LANE MAKE LANDFALL OVER THE STATE OF HAWAII?

Day 111 of the Lower Puna Eruption, and the worry of the day is how Hurricane Lane might worsen conditions here.

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A map of all hurricane tracks in the Atlantic:

Click on this for a quick tutorial by the Smithsonian, where you can learn details like, naming began during World War II, when names of girlfriends were used.  In 1953, the list was made alphabetical, with males added in 1979.  There are now six different lists depending on ocean.  There is no procedure for having a hurricane named after you.

The amount of heat released by a hurricane can be up to exploding a 10 megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes.  Here is a calculation indicating a hurricane is equal to 500,000 atomic bombs.  The eye is usually between 20 and 40 miles wide, with the the highest speed in the eyewall.  Hurricanes are weakened by a path over land, vertical wind shear and cooler waters.

Can a hydrogen bomb be exploded to disrupt a hurricane?  Well, the idea has surfaced.  

Aircraft dropped silver iodide into budding hurricanes from 1962-1983.  Project Stormfury was initiated to reduce the intensity of these storms, but maybe the opposite reaction occurred. 

Someday I will report of the federal effort to seed Hurricane Camille, which became the second-most intense tropical cyclone to strike the USA.  Records cannot be found anymore.  I happened to have traveled through the Biloxi area before Camille's landfall, where there was a highway.  When I returned a year later, there was no highway.

I've long felt that a sufficient number of Blue Revolution plantships located where these storms form could prevent the formation of hurricanes.  Here is a paper on this subject.

Strength of hurricanes (cyclones, typhoons...they're all the same, except that in the Northern hemisphere, they revolve counter-clockwise, while in the Southern hemisphere, clockwise)

The official recording of hurricanes in the Central Pacific only began in 1950.  During this 58-year period, the only two hurricanes to make landfall over an island in the State of Hawaii were:

• Dot in 1959
• Reached 150 MPH.
• Struck Kauai at around 75 MPH, with gusts up to 103 MPH.
• Caused $6 million of damages, about half to the sugar industry:

• I was a beneficiary here.  
• The winds leveled the cane.
• USDA inspectors came and gave Kilauea Sugar Company a lot of damage money.
• Sugar cane bends.  
• They grew back.

• I arrived at Kilauea Sugar Company in 1962 and spent a year there.  (To the right, Pearl and Pepper at Slippery Slide Falls, our backyard.)
• In 1962 Kilauea had the lowest rainfall in a long time.
• Previously, cane brought into the factory had a lot mud, and clarification was a serious problem.  Not in 1962.

• C. Brewer had instituted a YCII (yield cost incentive, not sure about the other "i") where employees would share in mega-profits.
• The combination of increased production and federal money that year doubled my salary, which served as the down payment for the first apartment, my first penthouse, I bought when I  decade later returned to Honolulu with a PhD.

• Iniki in 1992:
• Reached Category 4 strength with winds of 145 MPH and gusts up to 227 MPH when it struck Kauai on 9/11 (September 11).
• Resulted in $3.1 billion (about $5.5 billion today) of damage, destroying 1400 homes and causing six deaths.
• It is believed Iniki formed off the coast of Africa on August 18, crossed over Central America and found its way to Kauai.
• The Central Pacific Hurricane Center, even 24 hours before landfall, kept saying that the eye would remain south of the Hawaiian islands.
• The storm surge was up to 18 feet high, creating a debris line 800 feet inland.
• Rainfall was minimal because the storm moved so fast through the island.

However, there is no record of any hurricane making landfall on any of the other islands.  It's possible that ocean storms in 1843 and 1871 struck land, but there is no firm evidence.  Thus, it is possible that Hurricane Lane will be first to make landfall over a non-Kauai island.

Does this mean we in Hawaii are, thus, safe?  Nope.  There is a first time for everything.  

Here is the latest info on Hurricane Lane:

While currently still at Category 4, most projections show a weakening to Category 1 as the hurricane approaches Oahu on Thursday or Friday.  There are various computer models predicting Lane's path:

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