Stormy weather brings large hail
HONOLULU — For about a week, Hawaii’s famous sunny weather has been replaced with thunderstorms, large pieces of hail, and the arrival of what weather officials say was the first tornado in four years to hit the islands.
A 30-minute hail storm Friday over windward Oahu was “unprecedented,” for Hawaii, said Tom Birchard, senior meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Honolulu. Not only is it highly unusual for hail to fall over Hawaii, but some stones that measured as large as three inches are likely record-breaking, he said.
Small stones were reported to have fallen on other islands over the course of about a week of heavy rains over parts of Hawaii that closed schools, caused sewage spills, flooded homes and dampened vacations. There were landslides, power outages and roads blocks by trees, boulders and mud.
Cold weather in the middle and upper levels of the atmosphere has led to strong updrafts that kept the ice chunks from melting into rain before hitting the ground, Birchard said. Thunderstorms were in Friday’s forecast but heavy rains were expected to subside by Saturday. It’s the tail end of Hawaii’s rainy season.
In the coastal town of Kailua, a Honolulu suburb, part of a roof blew off a house and was carried several hundred yards when a waterspout moved ashore to become a tornado. The twister damaged or destroyed several roofs and toppled trees and power lines.
State apologizes to booted tourists
HONOLULU — Hawaii officials said a security guard’s decision to kick a group of stranded tourists out of an airport and into the stormy night was an embarrassment to the state.
Parts of Hawaii have endured almost a weeks-worth of relentless rain that has closed schools, blocked roads and overflowed sewers. When heavy rains canceled flights out of Kauai after midnight on Tuesday, about 20 passengers were stuck at the airport.
The small airport in Lihue normally closes overnight and the guard told the passengers including a pregnant woman and a disabled man that they needed to leave immediately.
“Everybody is flabbergasted that the security guard wouldn’t let them stay at the airport,” Department of Transportation spokesman Daniel Meisenzahl said. “He basically put them out on the curb in this terrible rainstorm.”
The Hawaii Tourism Authority and Hawaiian Airlines have been trying to help state officials contact the kicked-out passengers so they could get personal apologies. The state’s lieutenant governor, Brian Schatz, managed to reach one couple by phone at their Littleton, Colo., home on Thursday.
“I said we’re sorry and we wanted to express our aloha,” Schatz said of the 15-minute phone call. “There’s nothing that can be done to undo this mistake. I imagined myself, and my wife, being treated like this. I thought it was important to try to make it right.”
