Active Weather
Hawaii carries the item that matters most in this brief, and the useful thing about it is the timing. Nothing about it is happening today.
Hurricane Lowell is in the Central Pacific south of the islands. The National Hurricane Center's page lists it as a category 5 hurricane near 13.3 north, 161.4 west, with maximum sustained winds of 160 mph, a central pressure of 922 millibars, and movement toward the west at 7 mph.
The Central Pacific Hurricane Center's forecast discussion is the part worth reading closely. It expects Lowell to slow down before turning north and then northeast late in the weekend into Monday, and it places the center of Lowell near or just west of the westernmost main Hawaiian islands late Monday into early Tuesday. It also expects increasing wind shear to begin weakening the storm around three days out. Kauai and Niihau are the islands nearest that forecast track.
No hurricane watch or warning is in effect for any Hawaiian island as of this brief. The advisory language in use is that interests in the Hawaiian islands should closely monitor the storm's progress. A watch, if one is issued, would come first and would typically arrive about two days ahead of expected conditions.
What is active today is surf. A high surf advisory is in effect for Hawaii, and increased surf is expected across all the islands through the long weekend. Surf from a distant hurricane arrives well ahead of the storm and looks deceptively ordinary from the beach, which is why advisories precede the weather by days.
Forecast uncertainty at this range is real and worth stating plainly rather than hiding. The three day track forecast carries an average error of roughly 85 to 90 miles. For a chain of islands that is the difference between a close pass and a direct one, and it is why the sensible posture today is preparation rather than prediction.
On the mainland, California carries seven active alerts: a high surf advisory, three beach hazards statements, and two coastal flood advisories, issued by the Los Angeles and Oxnard, Eureka, and San Francisco offices and running as far out as September 8. Those are water hazards rather than household ones. Sneaker waves and strong rip currents are the mechanism, and the guidance is to keep off exposed rocks and jetties and never turn your back on the water.
Arizona, Nevada, and Guam carry no active alerts this morning. Two other hurricanes are in the wider Pacific, Karina at 80 mph and Marie at 100 mph, and neither has watches or warnings for land.
Infrastructure
Two uncontained wildfires are burning in California, both with structures threatened. The Plaskett fire stands at 29,702 acres and 19 percent contained. The Timber fire stands at 25,346 acres and 23 percent contained. Southern California is at geographic area preparedness level 3.
In Nevada, the McConnell fire is at 33,231 acres and 81 percent contained with no structures threatened, and the Calico fire is at 18,319 acres and 98 percent contained with residences threatened. Those figures come from the National Interagency Fire Center report dated September 4 and are roughly a day behind this morning.
The national wildfire preparedness level is 4, down one step from 5 yesterday. The year to date national total is 52,939 fires and 8,296,949 acres, or 125 percent of the ten year average for fires and 160 percent for acres.
No grid emergencies or water system disruptions are reported across the region this morning.
For Hawaii, the infrastructure question ahead of a possible storm is the practical one. Island power grids are self-contained, so an outage there cannot be solved by importing electricity from a neighboring state the way a mainland outage often is. Restoration depends on local crews and local materials. That is the reason a Hawaii household plans for a longer outage than a mainland household of the same size would.
If you run a generator during an outage, the Consumer Product Safety Commission's guidance is to operate it outdoors only, at least 20 feet from the house, with the exhaust pointed away from windows, doors, and vents. Working carbon monoxide alarms belong on every level of the home and outside sleeping areas, and should be tested monthly. If a carbon monoxide alarm sounds, get outside first, then call 911.
Public Health
No heat alerts are in effect in California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, or Guam this morning.
Air quality is the item that varies by address rather than by state. The Environmental Protection Agency's AirNow service reports that wildfire smoke is affecting air quality in multiple states without naming them, and its Fire and Smoke Map at fire.airnow.gov answers the question for a specific location. With two uncontained fires burning in California, that map is more useful than any regional summary, including this one.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Health Alert Network archive could not be read this run, so this brief makes no claim about national health advisories in either direction.
Watch Item
This is the paragraph that matters, and its subject is the next 48 hours rather than the storm.
The forecast places Lowell nearest the western islands late Monday into early Tuesday. That leaves Saturday and Sunday, which is more preparation time than most households anywhere get for anything. Nothing about the situation calls for hurrying today. It calls for using two ordinary days well.
For a household on Kauai or Niihau, and to a lesser degree across the chain, the useful work is the work that stores get thin on later: drinking water at roughly one gallon per person per day for several days, food that needs no cooking, batteries and a flashlight per person rather than per household, a battery or hand crank radio, prescription refills brought forward, and cash in small bills because card readers need both power and a network. Filling vehicle fuel tanks this weekend is easier than filling them Monday.
Around the house, the outdoor work is the part that becomes impossible in wind. Anything loose in a yard, on a lanai, or on a roof becomes a projectile, and clearing gutters and drains is what decides whether several inches of rain leaves through the downspout or through a wall. Forecasters expect locally heavy rainfall of several inches, particularly on south facing slopes of Kauai and the Big Island.
The documentation step costs twenty minutes and pays only if it is done first. Photograph each room, including inside closets and cabinets, and put the photos somewhere that is not only on the phone in your pocket.
Then stop. The next real decision point is whether the Central Pacific Hurricane Center issues a watch, and that is their call to make and announce. Checking their advisories twice a day is the correct amount of attention. Watching a track map hour by hour will not change what your household should do, and the forecast will genuinely be better tomorrow than it is today.
For California, the surf and coastal flood advisories run into next week, and the fire picture is the slower story. Drought remains the background condition, with the United States Drought Monitor map valid September 1 putting 49.5 percent of the continental United States in drought and naming California and Nevada among the areas its regional summaries single out.
Explore Today
The step by step version of what a household does with two days of warning, written to be worked through rather than skimmed.
What a household covers on its own before help is routine. Especially relevant where the grid is an island grid.
For California and Nevada households, the work around the house that matters while fires are still burning.