President Donald Trump has approved an emergency disaster declaration for Hawaiʻi County due to the damage from Hurricane Lala.
The state was spared from severe wind and rain when Tropical Storm Moke passed south of the islands, but a third weather disturbance is forming in the waters off of Hawaiʻi.
HPR spoke with John Bravender, Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the National Weather Service, to learn more about the forecast.
Interview Highlights
On Tropical Storm Iselle and upcoming weather formations
JOHN BRAVENDER: Right now, we have Tropical Storm Iselle that's fading. It's going into colder water. It's weakening, not expected to last much longer. But there's several other areas of development that we're watching in both the central and eastern Pacific. We're in this active phase of tropical development for the next one to two weeks, so there's a lot of tropical potential there to pay attention to. …
Iselle won't be a threat to us. It will weaken soon. We might see an increase in moisture, some trade showers next week from the remnants of it, but it's what develops after that. That's the concern for next week.
On the stronger hurricane season and fighting hurricane fatigue
BRAVENDER: When we were talking at the start of the season about it being a very active year, this is kind of what we're looking at — a lot of back-to-back development, which is not just stressful for responders and people recovering, but also for everybody preparing. … There's that sense of endurance that you have to dig into, that with this hurricane season, it's not just one and done and we're safe for the rest of the year. We'll have more activity coming. And during busy El Niño years like this, there can also be longer hurricane seasons, too. …
Even though hurricane season runs June through November, we have activity outside of hurricane season, and we have seen those. We tend to see those in the warm El Niño years: December 2015, January 2016, we had tropical cyclones form. So even once we get to the end of November, we're still not completely out of the woods.
On preparing for future weather disasters
BRAVENDER: Think about where you live, whether you're prone to flooding in your area, and if you are, maybe you should think about going to stay with friends or family ahead of time. Don't wait until the event is unfolding. Roads might get cut off; you might get trapped. Think about where you can go, where you might be safer now, so you don't have to worry about it as the event is unfolding. …
Stay up to date with the forecast, see what's happening, pay attention to the news, to trusted sources like local emergency managers, like the National Weather Service, and just stay on top. Tropical cyclone development is very, very uncertain in some of these forecasts. They can develop fast, and predicting where they go can be difficult, especially far out in time. So stay up to date.
This story aired on The Conversation on Aug. 26, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
