Lala strengthens into a hurricane and bears down on Hawaii’s Big Island with heavy rain, winds
The National Hurricane Center said Lala's maximum sustained winds increased to 75 mph (120 kph), making it a Category 1 hurricane. The storm's center was forecast to move over or near the island's southern end by the evening, lashing its worst winds at volcanic slopes thousands of feet above sea level.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/hawaiis-big-island-lashed-by-rain-and-wind-as-tropical-storm-lala-closes-inOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
8 replies
Yeah its pretty bad, although I think we were spared the worst of it. The models were pretty wrong in terms of track. It was supposed to be almost 200 miles off Oahu, and ended up coming within 80 miles of Honolulu. Probably for people who go through hurricanes all the time they don't think thats nothing, but we've got crazy terrain here, so that "barely a hurricane" turns into 100+ mph gusts depending on terrain.
I know most of where I live is out of power right now and I think were only still on because of solar panels. Had some shade structures for my vanilla come down but was after a day of cutting down trees and branches in preparation. If we had anything close to a direct hit there is no way my house would still be standing. And there is another "maybe" in 10 days.
Yeah we still no power on East Side of O'ahu. Wind was crazy at 4:00 am. Get jalousies in my bedroom that never really close and so I was woke up by rain spraying into the room, covering the ceiling and soaking everything. Tried to get a shower curtain nailed up but couldn't get the buggah to stay still. So now all clothes and towels is damp. Big tree fell down in a little park area next to my house, barely missed a house. Plenty fences down.
I grew up in Florida and hurricanes/tropical storm is typical late summer experience. Houses are built for it (but not for the hot, still air after). But it's way different here. The mountains create gusts so much stronger. It was wild. It felt more like a Cat 2 in Florida than "just" a tropical storm.
Yessah. Imagine get one real da kine. Place I stay, 100 years old and the rear wall already kinda taco/smiling. If this was even a bit closer, ho. I'd be up valley waianae stay my friends place get one block house.
When I was a kid, I learned that “hurricane” denoted a tropical cyclone in the Atlantic, while “typhoon” was the same type of storm in the Pacific. This made sense because if the news is reporting a named storm, it’s easy to know where the storm is based on the use of “hurricane” or “typhoon.” I guess we’re not doing that anymore. For the US, it’s all hurricanes, and any confusion over which list of names we’re working from is just part of the fun because people supposedly can’t be bothered to know what a typhoon is.
On one of the local stations here they noted that when the storm reforms as a hurricane, it will cross the international date line and then become known as a typhoon. So I'm guessing it's a Western/Eastern hemisphere thing now?
The term is tropical cyclone, no matter where it forms. Typhoon and hurricane are colloquial names.
As I stated in the first sentence of my comment.
Lala has already passed the populated Hawaiian islands. It caused a lot of damage.
https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/08/lalas-wrath-homes-swept-away-some-power-outages-may-last-months/