Hurricane Nolo

Hurricane — Category 2 Nolo is packing 95-kt (110-mph) winds, moving W at 9 kt (10 mph). Expected to stay over open water.

At 200 AM HST (1200 UTC), the eye of Hurricane Nolo was located near latitude 23.3 North, longitude 170.4 West. Nolo is moving faster toward the west near 13 mph (20 km/h). A mainly westward motion with an additional increase in forward speed is expected during the next few days. On the forecast track, the center of Nolo will continue to move through the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument but remain just south of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands west of Maro Reef. Maximum sustained winds are near 110 mph (175 km/h) with higher gusts. Rapid intensification could continue over the next day or so, with Nolo forecast to become a major hurricane later today. Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 25 miles (35 km) from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 115 miles (185 km). The estimated minimum central pressure is 964 mb (28.47 inches).— National Hurricane Center · public advisory 51

Nolo tracks over open water — no coast is in the outlook. Along its path, our forecast reads:

This is the East Pacific · 21°N–31°N, 180°W–192°E. Nolo’s forecast track is the dotted spine — the labelled dots mark its position each day. Every cell is shaded by how many hours it spends inside Nolo’s gale-force (≥34 kt · 39 mph) wind across the whole forecast, the damaging core counted double.

Read it two ways at once. Colour is the total — the hours of gale-force wind a place piles up. A slow storm writes its danger in duration, not in any single gust, so the longer the wind sits over a place, the deeper its colour. Opacity is confidence — solid where the official probability of that wind is high, faint where it is only a chance. So a deep, solid cell is a place the wind will work for a long time and likely will; a pale, faint one is a brief, uncertain brush at the edge of the cone.