Hurricane Lala lashes Hawaii’s Big Island with strong winds and heavy rain

Hurricane Lala brushed past Hawaii's Big Island as a Category 1 storm in mid-August, coming within about 30 miles of South Point without making landfall but still dumping up to 32 inches of rain and packing winds as high as 91 mph at peak strength. Flash floods and mudslides swept more than 100 homes off their foundations, killed one person in a car accident, and left about 219,000 households without power at the peak of the outage, with three hospitals forced onto backup generators. Hawaii Governor Josh Green called it 'amazing' that there appeared to be no additional deaths despite the widespread property destruction, while about 180 National Guard members were deployed and roughly 190 flights were postponed as Big Island's two main airports briefly closed. Lala later weakened to a tropical storm as it tracked west, with tropical storm warnings remaining in effect across all eight major Hawaiian islands and some Maui residents left without water.

The storm marked Hawaii's most significant brush with a hurricane since Category 4 Hurricane Iniki caused six deaths and $3 billion in damage in 1992, and came amid a year of strong El Nino conditions that meteorologists linked to warmer Pacific waters capable of fueling more intense storms. About a week later, Tropical Storm Moke brought additional heavy rain and wind to Big Island, compounding the recovery effort from Lala's damage.