HONOLULU — People in Hawaii are bracing for another round of heavy rain and winds, even as they’re still trying to clean up and recover from a hurricane last weekend that damaged homes, downed trees and left roads covered in mud and rocks.
Like with Hurricane Lala, the Big Island is again expected to bear the brunt of the tropical weather, which was expected to be upgraded from a tropical depression to a tropical storm at some point Friday. The rain and heavy winds are expected to begin there late Saturday, with the storm continuing to move west across the islands through early Tuesday, said Casey Oswant, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Honolulu.
“There will still be impacts, especially to the windward and southeast sides of the Big Island, but it will probably be a little bit more limited than what we saw with Lala,” she said.
The northeast coast of the Big Island saw the heaviest rainfall from Lala, at 43.54 inches (1.1 meters), according to the weather service. The resulting flooding swept dozens of homes from their foundations and damaged roads and bridges. About 11,630 customers on the Big Island remained without power Friday, according to poweroutage.us.
Rainfall predictions for this weekend for the southeast and windward sides of the Big Island were 5 to 10 inches (13 to 25 centimeters) of rain, with isolated amounts up to 15 inches (38 centimeters), Oswant said. Across the rest of the island chain, 1 to 2 inches (2 to 5 centimeters) of rain was expected to fall, though parts of east Maui could see up to 4 inches (10 centimeters), she said.
There were no coastal watches or warnings in effect Friday morning, but people were urged to closely monitor the storm’s progress. The rainfall has the potential to cause dangerous rip currents, life-threatening flooding and mudslides, especially in steep areas and places where the ground remains saturated in Lala’s wake, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green and other state officials held a news conference Thursday afternoon to update Lala recovery progress and urge people to prepare for the next storm.
Officials urged people low on emergency supplies to restock up to 14 days of food, medicine and other essentials and closely monitor the storm’s progress.
“There’s definitely tension in the air” at the thought of more rain in communities that floodwaters turned into rivers, said Tiffany Edwards Hunt, a teacher living in Keaau, on the east side of the Big Island. “There were some areas that were completely washed out.”
The Hawaiian Electric utility said it expects nearly all affected customers on the Big Island to have power restored, except for certain remote and severely damaged areas.
