Hawaii’s weather takes ‘unprecedented’ turn towards the bizarre

March 10, 2012 – HAWAII – A rare tornado blew roofs off homes and left other damage in its path through the Hawaiian communities of Lanikai and Enchanted Lake on Oahu, weather officials confirmed Friday. A National Weather Service team surveying damage and talking to witnesses determined a waterspout came ashore and was reclassified as a tornado in Lanikai about 7:30 a.m. The 20-yard-wide tornado traveled about 1.5 miles in 15 minutes to Enchanted Lake with wind speeds reaching 60 to 70 mph before dissipating, officials said. Hawaii, known for its famous sunshine, has been hit with unusually harsh weather for about a week. Kaeo DePonte stands with a trampoline lifted out of an Enchanted Lake yard by high winds on Friday morning. A 30-minute hail storm on Friday in Oahu was “unprecedented,” Tom Birchard, senior meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Honolulu, told the Associated Press. Some of the hail stones have been unusually large for the islands — the size of marbles and discs more than a half inch long, weather.com reported. The islands also saw heavy rains and thunderstorms that closed schools, flooded homes and led to sewage spills. Landslides, power outages and roads blocks by trees, boulders and mud were reported. Some vacationers in the tropical paradise had their vacations dampened. When heavy rains canceled flights out of Kauai after midnight on Tuesday, about 20 passengers were stuck at the airport. The heavy rains were expected to subside by Saturday. There were no reports of deaths or injuries due to the storm. –MSNBC

Hailstones pound Hawaii: Deadly, devastating tornadoes in the northeastern U.S. are again setting records this year, and arriving earlier than ever. Meanwhile, frigid conditions have killed hundreds across Europe, while spring-like conditions exist in vast areas of North America. Now folks in Hawaii are seeing something previously unheard of: golf ball sized hail stones on the North Shore of Oahu and in some other areas across the state. In June, 2011 snow on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea (the dormant volcano which is the highest point in the Islands) was unusual, but according to experts, not unheard of. lifeslittlemysteries.com reports that hot air met cold above Mauna Kea, one of several volcanic island mountains that make up the Hawaii island chain , causing a powerful thunderstorm that, in the presence of the cooler-than-normal air, dropped roughly 6 inches of snow on the mountaintop. “The ground coverage was significant, mostly above 12,000 feet,” Ryan Lyman, a forecast climatologist at the Mauna Kea Weather Center, told Life’s Little Mysteries. –Newser.com

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