This Mother’s Day was marked with monsoon like rains that came fast and came hard.
Kamehameha Highway in Waikane became a flowing river with water ankle deep. Nearby roads were also quickly flooded – making cars look like boats – motoring through the mess.
"It backs up at the bottom, there’s no where for it to go into the ocean," said Kanaloa Bishop, Windward Oahu resident.
Around 9:30 a.m. Sunday morning, rainfall gauges measured two inches per hour in the Koolau mountain range. Creating dozens of raging waterfalls. All that rain had to go somewhere, forcing rivers and streams to rise rapidly.
"I can hear it, this is the kind of rain that makes you scared," said Verna Ulii.
Ulii and her Hauula neighbors are on edge watching Pokiwai Stream behind their homes begin to swell.
"If it’s going to consistently pour like it just has, then we’ll be in for some serious trouble," she said.
She has seen too many times to count how quickly the stream can overflow it’s banks and flood her living room.
"Definitely, and I think it will be like this the next few days – so we’ll be on edge all of us all the neighbors," said Ulii.
At Tamura’s in Hauula store owners and customers had no time to prepare for the amount of wet weather they had in store.
"It was like flash flooding in our store because in a matter of minutes we couldn’t do anything," said store manager Darlene Kauhi.
Around noon, constant downpours became too much for the drain behind the store warehouse to handle.
"In a matter of minutes couldn’t do anything just came into the warehouse, back door, flooded the whole store and in a matter of another two minutes went through the front," she said.
Kauhi said there was no stopping it.
"It was an inch in the store, almost three inches out the back," she said.
Fire crews were called to help clear the drain and the store shut down for over an hour as employees picked up brooms, mops and vacuums to move the water out.
"I have to watch it, hopefully that’s the last of it," said Kauhi.
It wasn’t just Windward Oahu hit hard with wet weather, above Moanalua Golf Course the downpours forced dirt and mud to come sliding down the mountain. The debris ended up in Jenette Scully’s yard, thankfully not too close to her home.
See the original article at: KHON2 Local News
