Hurricane Lala dumped enough rain on Hawaii to fill 1.9 million Olympic swimming pools

News admin August 21, 2026 0 Comments

Hurricane Lala dumped enough rain on Hawaii to fill 1.9 million Olympic swimming pools

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Researchers said Lala dumped an extraordinary volume of water across the state — equivalent to 1.9 million Olympic-size swimming pools — when it passed south of Hawaiʻi as a hurricane and tropical storm.

Data compiled by the University of Hawaiʻi’s Hawaiʻi Mesonet and the Hawaii Climate Data Portal revealed that Hawaiʻi Island received 66% of the storm’s total precipitation, absorbing 833 million gallons of water.

They launched an interactive website documenting the weather impacts of Hurricane Lala.

Record-breaking rainfall intensity

During the peak of the storm on Saturday night, the Kaiholena weather station — located upslope of Naʻalehu — recorded a remarkable 4.4 inches of rain in a single hour. Devastating flooding hit the town of Naʻalehu around that same time.

In some areas of Hawaiʻi Island and Maui, storm totals exceeded 40 inches.

“You put even a few inches of rain across the big area, that is a lot of water,” said Thomas Giambelluca, director of the Hawaii Mesonet. “And we had over 40 inches of rain during the whole storm in some areas. So just think about that, the entire land area in a certain part of the island with a rainfall accumulation that is 3 1/2 feet deep. That’s a lot of water.”

In addition to the historic downpours, the weather stations recorded wind gusts reaching up to 80 mph.

Historical storm comparisons

While Lala’s totals were extreme, Giambelluca noted that the state has experienced similar or greater deluges in recent years. In March, the spring Kona lows brought rainfall amounts that exceeded Lala.

In April 2018, Waipā on Kauaʻi recorded over 49 inches of rain in 24 hours, setting the current United States record. Later that year, in August 2018, Hurricane Lane produced up to 100 inches of rain over four days on Hawaiʻi Island.

“It fortunately did not make landfall and it weakened, but it produced some spectacular rainfall totals, especially on… Hawaii Island, where we had maybe as much as 100 inches in four days in some places,” Giambelluca said.

Researchers said the data highlights how extreme weather patterns can simultaneously trigger multiple crises. During Hurricane Lane, emergency responders on Maui had to split resources between massive flooding on the east side of the island and wildfires that broke out in Lahaina.

“This was not the one we all think about now from August 2023. It was five years before that, but there were wildfires around Hana,” Giambelluca said. “It was particularly bad because the emergency responders were rushing to the floods and the fires broke out and they weren’t available to help deal with that.”

El Niño patterns and weather monitoring

Researchers analyzed the storm using the Hawaiʻi Mesonet, a statewide network of more than 80 weather stations.

Giambelluca emphasized that the real-time data provided by the network is vital not just for emergency responders, but also for researchers, water resource managers, farmers, and ranchers.

Giambelluca added that the active tropical storm season is typical for the start of a strong El Niño year, which generally brings a wet dry season.

“If it continues to hold the pattern of the past, we’ll have a very dry wet season coming up starting around December,” he said. “This doesn’t always happen, but it generally does happen in the very strong El Niños.”