Emergency declared in Hawaii as record rainfall brings flooding

(Bloomberg) — Record rainfall in Hawaii caused floods, landslides and knocked out power to downtown Honolulu while prompting an emergency declaration across the state as a powerful Pacific storm dumped a deluge on the islands.

A daily record of 7.92 inches (20.117 centimeters) fell Monday (Dec. 6, 2021) on Honolulu, the state’s largest city, according to the National Weather Service. Other areas on the island of Oahu received close to 10 inches of rain, said David Roth, a senior branch forecaster with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. Severe thunderstorms were also raking Oahu with winds of up to 50 miles per hour.

“This should be the last day for Honolulu and the main islands,” Roth said. “The watches were removed for the eastern islands.”

The powerful storm, called a Kona low, developed over the weekend west of the Hawaiian chain and drifted, pulling deep tropical moisture across the islands. As much as 25 inches of rain was expected and snow was falling across the peaks of its largest volcanoes on the Big Island.

Hawaii Governor David Ige declared an emergency Dec. 6, 2021, and Honolulu opened four emergency shelters. Many roads around the region were closed. Some areas in the center of Honolulu were expected to remain without power throughout the day after a substation flooded, Hawaiian Electric said in a Tuesday statement.

“System operators and planners worked through the night to come up with creative solutions to enable us to bring more customers back online as soon as possible,” Jim Alberts, senior vice president of operations at the utility, said in the statement.

More than 4,150 customers were without electricity as of 2:40 p.m. (EST), according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages reported on utility websites. The disruptions come as numerous memorials are scheduled to mark the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, in Oahu.

The storm was being fed by an atmospheric river, long plumes of moisture that often bring damaging floods to the U.S. and Canadian west coasts. It was such an event that caused devastating flooding across the western Canadian province of British Columbia and in Washington state last month.

As the system drifts west, the most heavily populated areas of Hawaii will begin to see some relief as the flooding rains shift to the smaller western islands, Roth said.

— With assistance from Mark Chediak.

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