Just a little rain

[PonoBill]

Well, the surf has kind of sucked lately, and there's no wind to downwind, but I'm considering taking up skimboarding on my lawn, which has about an inch of water on it, evenly distributed. Normally any water sinks into the soil here on Maui almost instantly since it's basically ground up volcano. but we've had enough rain to saturate the top few feet. Buckets of rain, torrents, and not just for the usual half hour--all day and all night.

I drove to S-turns and Little Makaha yesterday looking for the sizable north swell wrap that was predicted. The wrap was there, but the creek that forms the reef break that makes S-turns a natural wave park was swollen and billowing mud and junk across the road and into the break. Even discounting the likelihood of a shark attack at any time (yeah, I know, brackish muddy water is prime, but still...) i didn't want to play in that shit--literally. I never realized that little Mac has a creek, but it was equally skanky. So I wound up at Puamana, which sounds to me like "So we wound up at Denny's" which used to be the sad end of an unsuccessful babe hunt on Friday night when I was young, unattached and restless.

After a few hours of surfing waist-high semi beach break (the Puamana reef is close in), I called Covesurfer to see if he was coming. He said he was marooned at home by the flooding near his house. I gave him some shit about it, discounting flooding as an extreme description of a little water on the road--until I turned the corner on the westside pali and saw what the middle of the island looked like: a literal wall of water. I automatically skirted Kahalui heading home, which was a good thing. I might not have made it. Lots of stranded cars. What I thought was simply an irritating but typical storm was actually one of the worst rainfall floods experienced on Maui in many years. Here's a little clip of the Hana Highway in Kahalui. Nothing compared to hurricane flooding, but not the kind of "wet roads" I was accusing Covesurfer of being too sissy to drive over.

[Rider]

Pomo,  Nobody cares what's happening in Maui except the people who live there.  Even some of them don't care, if they had a care.

[surfcowboy]

Damn man. Winter in Hawaii is no joke actually but normally you can go hide on the South side a bit.

I need to hit you up about the west side breaks I think some of that wrap swell is about my speed. Finally planning a trip over again.

[littleray]

Pomo,  Nobody cares what's happening in Maui except the people who live there.  Even some of them don't care, if they had a care.

Actually,nobody cares what a negative nob has to say about anything.

[SUPcheat]

Boy, that's some real rain and flooding in Maui.  Looks like inner tube time in the culverts and runoffs.

Cali is still burning bright without any rain so far, and none on the radar for weeks.

Just turned 68 today, sob, so I guess I should be grateful to be vertical an not too effing effed up.  Maybe surf later if the waves keep up.

[PonoBill]

Happy Birthday. So far, so good. Just keep doing it. Most of the people I see my age are doddering around, doing nothing much. I joke about falling apart, but really my age hasn't changed my life much, and I don't plan to let it as long as I'm on the right side of the grass.

[Zooport]

Pomo,  Nobody cares what's happening in Maui except the people who live there.  Even some of them don't care, if they had a care.

Hmmm, many of us care...and who is "Pomo"?


.

[Zooport]

Dang, PB, that's some rain.  Reminds me of surfing in the rain at Sayulita and we found a dead cow in the water.   Pouring rain but the wind was down and the surf was good.   I actually didn't go out when I saw that.

[surfercook]

Reminds of my first day when we visited back in 2000. It rained quite hard so we visited an aquarium. I seem to remember it was quite close to Maalaea. Afterwards we took a quick look at that fabled break and there were actually a coupla guys on it, although it was nothing near the epic conditions I had viewed over the yrs in mags and vids. Then on the news that night there was a story about some people that tried to cross a creek and drowned when their vehicle over turned. I was like "Holy crap, Maui is a pretty dangerous place". The next day when we drove over to Honolua Bay, that cliffy access road w/the hairpin turns had some HUGE boulders strewn about that we drove around to get past. I have some pictures somewhere from my very first digital camera. It was a tiny Kodak  point and shoot w/like a 3mp res.

[SlatchJim]

I always wanted to take the Road "that used to go" to Hana. 

[SUPcheat]

Maui is awesome, beautiful and spiritual.  However, it does seem to have a great sense of impending doom from various actuations of nature, more so than even shake'n'bake, burning Cali.

[PonoBill]

Yeah, people die from the weirdest shit here (flash flood, grabs their car and takes it off a cliff, never to be seen again) and some of the roads look like something you'd see on the "road of death" in a third world country. When it rains hard there are a bunch of places you don't go. For instance, we don't take our "jungle route" to Haile Maile General Store, because you could get washed off the road into a gulch and no one would find you. But we have Home Depot and Walmart. So hey.

[covesurfer]

Rain at 21 degrees North, on the only landmass in thousands of miles, is nothing like rain on the mainland. Warm air masses are capable of holding (and dropping) unbelievable amounts of moisture, and, combined with mountainous terrain, that's a recipe for serious flash flooding. Places you wouldn't even think would be vulnerable to inundation can become rivers, temporary lakes and ponds. People get caught all the time. Most people just don't understand what they're risking. If you haven't ever been in a flash flood, you may not appreciate what Ma Nature is capable of. The people in this video somehow got extremely lucky and escaped with their lives. The storm we had earlier this week was so intense that at times you couldn't see more than a couple hundred feet in any direction because of intense rainfall. Inches an hour near sea level and much more higher up. And the mountains here exceed 5000' in the West Maui's and 10,000' on Haleakala. When those saturated clouds get forced up, and cooled down, rainfall amounts get measured in feet.



When it is going to seriously rain here, you are wise to heed the warnings. It reminds me of big ice and snow storms on the mainland in the PNW.

[PonoBill]

They got away because it was a minor one, I've seen it go much quicker and much bigger. Almost got nailed myself, playing in the pools in Iao Valley. Another time I was trying to cross the steep road to go to the Thai restaurant in Wailuku when Iao was flooding. The water was a fast-moving sheet about six inches deep. I was doing OK until a mattress came zooming down the road at about 40 MPH. I managed to dodge it, but lost my footing in the scramble and did a quick fifty feet of butt sledding until I found a shallow spot. Damp dinner. The restaurant had a half roof of tin, the rest is open air. The din from the rain was amazing and the waterfall off the roof into the open section was so heavy it looked like a wall--couldn't see the chairs and table through it even though they were only a few feet away.

This shot from Don Shearer's helicopter is about what I saw once in Hana. Crazy. Best view starts at 1:38. Picture those same folks trying to survive that.

[PonoBill]

Pomo,  Nobody cares what's happening in Maui except the people who live there.  Even some of them don't care, if they had a care.

I know exactly what you mean. When we go back to Hood River after a tough winter we're very careful about what we say to friends.