As the remnants of Felicia drifted away today, another hurricane with the potential to bring winds and rain was heading toward the Islands.

Hurricane Guillermo was still 1,900 miles east of Hilo last night, but it’s following the same track as Felicia. The National Hurricane Center upgraded it to a Catergory 1 hurricane at its 11 p.m. report today, as Guillermo’s sustained winds of 75 mph put it just over the threshold for a hurricane.
Guillermo is expected to weaken to a tropical depression by the time it nears Hawaiçi.
Ed Teixeira, state Civil Defense vice director, earlier today noted that Guillermo is weaker than Felicia — which at its peak was a Category 4 hurricane with 140 mph winds — but is twice the size.
Guillermo won’t have as much time as Felicia to gather strength over warm water and is expected to weaken if it continues moving west-southwest toward cooler waters, said Derek Wroe, National Weather Service forecaster.
If it continues along its current track and speed, it should be within 350 miles of the Big Island by Tuesday, Wroe said.
Civil defense officials around the state are on alert.
“We need to watch this one,” Teixeira said. “We have to be on our toes and watch developments. … If it’s not Guillermo, it will be another storm system developing that could be a threat to the Hawaiian Islands.
“The forecasts still show this one going into a hurricane in the same time period and moving into cooler waters and then weakening.”
Cooler ocean temperatures weaken hurricanes. That’s what happened to Felicia.
Even though Felicia did not make landfall and dissipated east of the Islands, it brought a lot of rainfall in a 72-hour period this week. On Kauaçi, Mount Wai‘ale‘ale received 13.56 inches; on Oçahu, Käneçohe received more than 7 inches of rain; and the Häna area on Maui received more than 6 inches of rain.
“We believe we’ll see a lot of weather systems throughout this hurricane system that runs through November,” Big Island Mayor Billy Kenoi said. “Felicia got everyone prepared. We were ready, but we want to be careful in our assessment and decision-making.”
The message is to be storm ready, Teixeira said. Be ready for heavy rain and wind, which still can cause a lot of damage from fallen trees, fallen power lines, power outage or rock falls and mud slides, he said.
Guillermo has a lot of ocean to cover before it makes it to Hawaiçi, Wroe said. It’s too early to tell how strong it might be by then or the exact path it will take because it is too far away.