Severe Thunderstorms and Heavy Snow in Hawaii
State of Emergency on the Big Island, Schools Closed on Maui
A strong storm system brought severe thunderstorms, damaging winds, heavy rain, landslides, heavy snow on the high mountains of the Big Island and school closings to Hawaii. Over half a dozen roads were blocked by fallen trees. (pic. above shows a tree and sires blocking a road - pic. from the Hawaii DOT). At several locations trees had fallen on cars. There were also reports of waterspouts and high surf warnings (for waves up to 18 feet high) were in effect.
Over 12% of customers were without power at some point due to the storms or over 63,000 customers. There were at least 169 separate outages. Wind gusts topped 60 mph at the island of Maui, where schools were closed Friday. A State of Emergency was declared on the Big Island.
Winter Storm Warnings were issued for the highest mountains of the Big Island for up to 10-15” of new snow and winds gusting to as high as 85 mph. There actually was a 120 mph gust recorded at the communications building at the summit of Haleakala.
This is a screen grab from a USGS webcam located on the rim of Mauna Loa. When I checked a weather station near th summit of Mauna Loa, they reported temperatures in the 30s with southwest wind at 43 mph.
The picture above from Bob Demore shows very heavy rain falling at the Inouye Airport in Honolulu. The airport picked up 1.24” of rain in less than an hour and a total rainfall Thursday of 3.57”. The Kona Airport had over 3 1/2” of rain. Up to 6” of rain was reported on the windward side of the islands. Flash flood warnings were issued.
The highest 24-hour rainfalls I saw were 9.79” at Kula and 8.86” at Puu Kukui. Here ‘s a list of rainfall totals.
Officials asked residents to “stay off the roads”. Quite a few traffic lights were not working due to power outages. Some schools were closed, including all schools on the island of Maui.