Winter Storm Surges Across Molokai

graphic by the National Weather Service

By Jack Kiyonaga, Editor

The biggest storm of the winter so far blew into Molokai on Thursday, Jan. 30, dumping two to four inches of rain across the island and whipping along with winds over 50 miles per hour.

“It was the most significant storm [of the winter] so far,” explained Joseph Clark, meteorologist for the National Weather Service. “It’s been such a quiet winter.”

The storm was actually not produced by a Kona low, explained Clark. Kona lows have a lot more cold air than this storm did, are more unstable and sit on a region for a longer period of time.

Last week’s storm was more “what we see in the Mid-West,” said Clark. Rather than forming in the far north or south of the hemisphere and then coming to Hawaii, this storm was originally a front sitting near Hawaii which developed a low-pressure wave across it. While the storm was intense across the islands, its duration was fairly quick.

Excluding trailing showers on Friday, Clark predicted that “we are back to trade winds” for the foreseeable future.

For Molokai, many businesses closed due to the storm, along with Maui County facilities. Across the county, public schools closed at noon on Thursday and remained canceled Friday. Several community meetings and events had to be rescheduled due to weather related travel delays.