"It’s unprecedented to see hail that large here in Hawaii," said Robert Ballard of the National Weather Service. "We don’t have any reports in our records, and I believe they go back at least into the 1950s even before, of hail larger than that."
Mother Nature put on a show on Kauai but it was on Oahu were she took it to a whole new level. Some the size of lemons and tennis balls.
"Like huge! We picked one off the ground like this big — like golf ball size," said Corin Krainer of Kaneohe. "It was nuts! And it was just coming down. I’ve never seen hail before so I was surprised."
"How’s that unreal yeah! My husband went outside to save his canoe with this pelting down," said neighbor Heidi Levora.
At first light Kaneohe residents saw just how powerful the hail was.
"This was a dark brown lounge before," said Levora.
Its paint was chipped by the hail. The family gazebo and ti leaf plants were also battered.
"The copper roof was not too bad before," said Levora. "These were looking pretty good yesterday. Got thrashed."
"There’s a crack right there," says Alexa Catobus says the hail was falling so hard, it shook her home. "It hailed like 3 or 4 times and then the last time it was like really small it looked like snow. I was freaking out!"
And when the hail backed off Catobus and residents on Aina Moi Place in Kaneohe had to deal with a different problem.
"It was coming like a waterfall," said Krainer.
A freak flash flood roared down their street. The volume was too much for a storm drain to handle.
"Completely underwater. Flowing through like a river out into the ocean — escaping," said Krainer.
The rushing water went through cars, SUVs and several homes and eventually flowed into Kaneohe Bay.
"It was coming straight across…yep …Straight across," said Catobus.
The clean up and damage assessment will take days. In the meantime, residents across windward Oahu will celebrate and share stories about their freaky Friday.
We’re going to have a cocktail party — neighbors collected we collected," said Levora. "Martinis."
See the original article at: KHON2 Local News
