Calvin may hit Hawaii as tropical storm; Talim to hit China Tuesday

First, nothing in the Atlantic to worry about; Don isn’t very organized and isn’t near anything, should be gone in a day or so. What matters are two storms in the Pacific.

The first, Calvin, is headed towards the big island of Hawai’i. The forecast is tricky – the storm is decaying, and might not even be a minimal tropical storm when it reaches the islands. Also, while the guidance is fairly tight, it won’t take much of a wobble to either miss altogether or go further north and impact one of the other main islands. Here’s the Sunday morning ET impact estimate using my TAOS/TC model, based on the official NHC forecast track:

Click any image to embiggen.

Calvin should be more of an inconvenience than a threat, but as with most tropical systems needs to be watched just in case. More than likely the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (which is about to take over forecasting and monitoring) will prudently issue tropical storm watches and warning soon. In mountainous areas, a wet low pressure system can cause flash flooding an a lot of damage, but in this case it looks like Calvin is moving fast enough that risk is less than it might be.

Further west, Tropical Cyclone Talim continues to intensify and is the main concern in the tropics. It should reach hurricane strength today, and is likely to make landfall in southern China. Here is the impact swath estimate:

On this track, there are over 25 Million people in the path, economic impacts likely to be in the $1 to $2 Billion dollar range. It should start to decay as it approaches landfall, but if not the damage estimate could easily double.

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