A Trio of Tropical Cyclones in the Pacific

Two powerful hurricanes and a strengthening tropical storm were churning through the Pacific Ocean, fueled by warm waters due to a historically strong El Niño climate episode. The storms, Hurricane Lowell and Hurricane Karina, both Category 4, were expected to pass south and northeast of Hawaii, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC). However, there was uncertainty over their tracks, with a possibility that Lowell could pass close to Hawaii's westernmost islands.

The NHC also reported that Tropical Storm Marie, currently a few hundred miles south of Baja California, was expected to become a hurricane. This "train of three cyclones" was considered rare, with a similar occurrence in 2015 during another intense El Niño year.

Hawaii was still recovering from the impacts of Hurricane Lala, which brought destructive winds and severe flash floods to the southern part of the Big Island last month. According to Julia Cole, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan, El Niño warming sets the stage for these storms, which are fueled in large part by warm waters.

Brief written by urgent.news from NASA Science, Gulf News, Phys.org — 3 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.