{"id":71808,"date":"2026-08-15T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=71808"},"modified":"2026-08-16T23:36:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T23:36:30","slug":"tropical-storm-lala-becomes-a-category-1-hurricane-as-it-approaches-the-big-island-of-hawaii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/71808","title":{"rendered":"Tropical Storm Lala becomes a Category 1 Hurricane south of the Big Island of Hawai`i"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video aligncenter\"><video autoplay controls loop muted src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/08\/260815_g18_ir_vis_Lala.mov\" playsinline><\/video><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>1-minute GOES-18 Infrared Window (left) and Visible images (right) with overlays of GLM Flash Points and surface observation data, from 1610 UTC on 15 August to 0400 UTC on 16 August<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 <em>(GOES-West)<\/em> Infrared Window and Visible images <strong><em>(above)<\/em><\/strong> showed Tropical Storm <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhc.noaa.gov\/archive\/2026\/LALA.shtml?\">Lala<\/a><\/strong> as it intensified to become a Category 1 Hurricane at 1900 UTC (<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/08\/260815_1900utc_goes18_infrared_Visible_Lala.png\">GOES-18 images<\/a><\/strong> | <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhc.noaa.gov\/archive\/2026\/cp01\/cp012026.update.08151858.shtml\">NHC advisory<\/a><\/strong>) south of the Big Island of Hawai`i on 15 August 2026. An overlay of 1-minute GOES-18 GLM Flash Points revealed that there was no intermittent satellite-detected lightning activity until 2323 UTC on 15 August. Some RAWS sites on the Big Island occasionally reported wind gusts in the 60-<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/08\/260816_0430utc_g18_ir_vis_khrh1_g77mph.png\">77 mph<\/a><\/strong> range &#8212; with a wind gust of <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/08\/260815_wpc_summary_Lala.text\">140 mph<\/a><\/strong> occurring at the Mauna Kea summit..<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The coldest overshooting tops surrounding the eye of Lala exhibited infrared brightness temperatures in the -75 to -80 C range (brighter white pixels embedded within dark black regions) &#8212; according to a plot of rawinsonde data from Hilo on the Big Island <strong><em>(below)<\/em><\/strong>, this corresponded to altitudes near or just above the Forecast Surface air parcel&#8217;s Equilibrium Level (EL).<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/08\/260815_1800utc_phto_raob.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/08\/260815_1800utc_phto_raob.png\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Plot of rawnsonde data from Hilo, Hawai`i at 1800 UTC on 15 August [click to enlarge]<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is noteworthy that the Precipitable Water (PW) value on the Hilo sounding was 2.73 inches &#8212; which appears to be the highest PW value on record for Hilo <em><strong>(below)<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/08\/260815_phto_tpw_climatology.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/08\/260815_phto_tpw_climatology.png\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Climatology of Precipitable Water (PW) for all Hilo, Hawai`i soundings [click to enlarge]<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With an unusually moist atmosphere in place, heavy rainfall amounts in excess of <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/08\/260816_wpc_summary_Lala.text\">42 inches<\/a><\/strong> occurred on the Big Island. Rainfall Rate derived using microwave data from the ATMS and AMSU instruments on a variety of polar-orbiting satellites is shown below &#8212; access to these and other Low-Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellite direct broadcast ground station products is discussed in <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/63076\">this blog post<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video aligncenter\"><video autoplay controls loop muted src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/images\/2026\/08\/260815_260816_atms_amsu_rainRate_Lala_anim.mp4\" playsinline><\/video><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Rain Rate derived using AMSU and ATMS microwave data, from 1131 UTC on 15 August to 0740 UTC on 16 August<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) Infrared Window and Visible images (above) showed Tropical Storm Lala as it intensified to become a Category 1 Hurricane at 1900 UTC (GOES-18 images | NHC advisory) south of the Big Island of Hawai`i on 15 August 2026. An overlay of 1-minute GOES-18 GLM Flash Points revealed that there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":71814,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,114,30,58,79,78,131,49,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-glm","category-goes-18","category-lightning","category-metop","category-microwave","category-noaa-20","category-noaa-21","category-suomi_npp","category-tropical-cyclones"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71808"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71835,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71808\/revisions\/71835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}