Hurricane Lala barrelled past Hawaii this past weekend and left a trail of mayhem in its wake. Here on the island, more than 60,000 households, including this one, are without power and there was a good deal of flooding and trees blown down. Our power went out just after midnight on Saturday morning. I took this as a bad sign as only the outer edges of the storm had reached the island at that time. Recent storms have resulted in power outages of a few hours duration. This promised something more lengthy.

Around 9:00 a.m. we lost our cell phone service, meaning we had no idea what was going on and how the storm was progressing. We had to drive several miles down the road to get erratic service. Since we were doing that, we decided to carry on to the South Kohala resort area to get lunch.

We stopped at Mauna Lani to find a tree blocking one lane and the restaurant we were aiming for closed. So we continued on to the restaurant at the theater in Waikoloa. This stretch of the coast was overcast but warm and with barely a breath of wind. When we were done, we headed back north. I wanted to stop at the river by Mauna Kea Resort as I’d seen it was running pretty high. This spot is about 9 miles miles from where we ate. When I pulled over to stop the wind was howling and threatening to blow me into oncoming traffic, which luckily was sparse. I took photos from both sides of the road making sure not to get blown over into the river! When I got back to the car, my wife said she thought it was going to get blown over!

On the way back home we found a line of cars and a fallen tree, which luckily just blocked one lane. For the remainder of the day, and much of the night, the wind howled, buffeting the house with strong gusts.

Sunday morning, all was calm again. The storm had mostly passed, trailing some bands of rain with occasional gusty winds. We still had no power or cell service, so I hit the road again to find a signal. At one point, a pole had broken and a line fallen across the road. Cars were backed up, but eventually began to cross the fallen line, which wasn’t a power line, but probably a fiber optic cable.

When I came back from finding a signal, I found a car off the side of the road. The driver had gone a bit too far onto the grass and slid down a slight bank and wasn’t able to get back up as the ground was so slick. Luckily a local truck driver came by and towed him out.

Today I learned many other places had it much worse, especially in the south end of the island. Our power is estimated to be restored late Wednesday, but I’m not counting my chickens. In the meantime my posts and respnses will continue to be erratic for a few days.