What’s Up With Pali, The Pacific’s Early-Bird Hurricane?
Not only is it the earliest on record in the central Pacific, it’s also moved closer to the equator than any other Northern Hemisphere cyclone on record.
It looks like Hurricane Pali, an out-of-season tropical weather system lingering far southwest of Hawaii, has no plans to follow typical weather patterns.
The 2015 hurricane season in the central Pacific region , and the 2016 season does not begin until June 1. But that didn’t stop  from taking shape and strengthening into a Category 1 hurricane Monday — theÂ
Pali had intensified into a Category 2 hurricane by Tuesday, with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph, according to the . It was then located about 1,410 miles southwest of Honolulu and 790 miles south of Johnston Island, but forecasters said it posed no threat to land.
 are known to have formed in the central Pacific in the month of January since 1949, Hawaii News Now reports. Tropical Storm Winona developed on Jan. 13, 1989, and Ekeka, which developed on Jan. 28, 1992, became a Category 3 hurricane.
If Pali’s timing wasn’t bizarre enough, it reportedly , when it moved closer to the equator than any other Northern Hemisphere cyclone on record.
“,” Bob Burke, a meteorologist with the Honolulu office of the National Weather Service, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “There are no records of any system crossing the equator.”
Pali comes on the heels of a , fueled by a  El Niño — a weather phenomenon that happens when sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean are warmer than usual — can , including bringing floods in the Americas, droughts in Asia and Australia, disrupted fishing and disease outbreaks.
“Whenever you have a strong El Niño, it makes it more likely that you have an out-of-season storm,” NWS forecaster Peter Donaldson told Hawaii News Now.
Pali is expected to continuing tracking south.
