Hawaii’s Weird Winter: Deluge, Drought, Fewer Rainbows But Plenty Of Green Flashes … La Nina is supposed to bring copious rain to Hawaii, but not so far this year, with implications for ranchers and water customers.
This year’s wet season in Hawaii started off slowly, but then the rain came with a vengeance — a so-called “Kona low” in early December brought as much as 14 inches over three days.
Stormy weather set in again around the New Year. And then, the spigot seemed to shut off.
Now, almost 80% of Hawaii is experiencing some level of drought, and the rest of the state is “abnormally dry.” As recently as Jan. 18, none of the state was in drought. It was a dramatic turnaround from a winter that started off with an epic downpour, and that was predicted to be wetter than usual because of the climate phenomenon known as La Nina
