Hurricane Hector Heads Toward Hawaii

Hurricane Hector Heads Toward Hawaii

Hurricane Hector—a category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale— is predicted to pass less than 200 miles south of the Big Island of Hawaii on the afternoon of August 8, according to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. The storm could bring large and dangerous waves to the southeastern and eastern shores of the Big Island and eastern Maui.

This image, acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite, shows the hurricane southeast of Hawaii on August 6. The storm had maximum sustained winds at 130 miles (210 kilometers) per hour as of August 7, although the storm was expected to weaken.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using VIIRS data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership. Caption by Kasha Patel.