2026 C and E Pacific tropical activity

[GaWx]

Naming a TC after a teletubby? 

[WxWatcher007]

Unfortunately, it looks like there won't be much if any more recon of Lala as recon is flying back to the mainland. 

The storm has struggled to organize a tight inner core, which makes it very hard for any kind of meaningful intensification to happen, but it's trying. We knew that would be an uphill battle. This morning's IR loop shows an attempt to wrap convection around the center, which is necessary for a faster pace of organization and intensification. 

 

Whether it truly gets there however, remains to be seen. Shear in the immediate vicinity doesn't look too bad at the moment. 

Lala remains embedded in a very dry environment, and although today it looks like it has more effectively fended off dry air intrusions, any ingestion of that dry air could disrupt an effort to organize and intensify. Marginal SSTs don't help either. 

All that said, the forecast looks on track. This is a higher end tropical storm, and with time and a somewhat conducive environment for organization and intensification a hurricane is certainly plausible. We're well within radar range now and can now watch for lower level organizational trends. 

Compared to this morning where there was a well defined but broad and ragged center, now we have what looks like a tightening inner core trying to form. Still, we don't have deep convection wrapping fully, but it's trying. 

Notice the wobble south too. As a chaser, once you get to this stage every wobble matters (even though you care about the long term movement still). It's still not a guarantee that we see an official landfall here, though impacts will be significant regardless. 

 

[NorthHillsWx]

Seems like the center will pass well south of the big island,  but with elevation I’m sure some very strong winds will occur on land 

[vortex95]

14 hours ago, NorthHillsWx said:

If anyone’s followed models or honestly just looked at the system and avoided social media it’s been very apparent for days this will be an upper-tier TS or bottom line cat 1 hurricane when it makes its closest approach. Based on what I’ve seen it likely skirts just south of the big island. Nothing shocking or surprising has happened this system has largely followed the forecast, though I agree at present it would seem to be unlikely this reaches hurricane intensity before its closest approach 

Yes, i agree. and yes, avoid social media w/ all its hype and gloom and doom rhetoric!

Looking at radar, you'd think that Lala is easily a min hurricane, but it shows how things can be misleading.  A less apparent mitigating factor is that Lala started out as a monsoonal system, so it already had a broad pressure field and center.  Monsoonal TCs generally do not tighten up much, esp. for its inner core, so I think that why you have a clear eye feature on radar, but the winds are less than what you would expect.

The eye is now apparent on IR, but it is very ragged and the convection is not smoothly banded around it.  That indicates shear and dry air still present.  Recon not since last night, so the one en route now will be interesting, but Doppler velocities suggest little change through 15z.

The overall point I was conveying from the start is that Lala is not you typical TC, and had more against it than for from the start, so odds of RI were low and it intensity curve would not be like many TC evolution we see for one moving W in the deep tropics.  These kind of details count.  I see far too many "social-meteorologists" and hype-masters gloss over things and treat all TCs the same as if it is "one-size fits all."  Nothing could be further from the truth!  For example, I bet there are some out there that are saying, "radar shows a clear eye, and now there is an eye on satellite, why isn't it upgraded to a hurricane?!"  And yes, I can see why.  Say Lala was far at sea.  In the absence of in situ recon data, going by satellite estimates alone, when an eye is present, even if ragged, that usually mean min hurricane strength (Dvorak Technique says this).  But again, one needs to examine all data available and the details for a proper assessment.  

My hope contributing to this forum is point out the finer details of TCs and their nuances/idiosyncrasies b/c the variance from TC to TC can be very large.