Dumper, Waikablowa, "Disaster!"

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

3/4/23

Aloha Muffled and Bundled Ones --

Our weather played a pretty big part of our week here, a rarity. It began as we were finishing our picnic breakfast at Kahilu'u Beach, a couple of miles from our house. A rather ominous looking bank of black clouds moved in from the ocean, and as we were packing up it started to rain. We ran for the car parked in the nearby lot and quickly put up the convertible top, though not before the inside got a bit wet. The rain then *really* came down, and it continued all day, through the night, and a good part of Sunday -- 2.5" total. Other parts of the island got even more. Wow, what a dumper.  

The next few days were pretty good, and we made up for our two crappy days over the weekend. Until Wednesday. We drove up the coast to Waikaloa Resort where we met our Ohio Friends for lunch at one of our favorite restaurants -- Tommy Bahama. Locals have nicknamed this area "Waikablowa" because of the

Glad it fell That Way!

strong winds that frequently blow through the gap between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa from the east. The gap acts as a venturi which makes the wind pick up speed, and it can sometimes be strong enough to be damaging. These are tradewinds on steroids. The same thing happens in the channel between Hawai'i and Maui, which is notorious among boaters for the strong wind and ocean currents. Before meeting our friends we stopped at a nearby beach to do some whale watching, but we gave up because the wind was so strong. In the parking lot the wind even uprooted a tree while we were there that fortunately fell away from the cars. It wasn't windy at home when we returned about 6 because we are sheltered by our local volcano. Around midnight, however, the wind somehow found its way to our part of the coast, and for a couple of hours it howled, bringing with it about .3" of rain. It was really kind of scary at times. Our poor lanai umbrella wound up in the pool again for the second time this winter. Fortunately that was about the only damage around our house. Some big limbs in the neighborhood came down, but overall the immediate area was ok. The next morning it was still raining, and even though the wind had died down, conditions weren't favorable for wimpy golfers -- we cancelled our Thursday outing at Makalei. Things just seem to get weirder and weirder.

 

Apropos of the weather, last night we went to our community theater production of the musical "Disaster." It was a fun, over-the-top parody of disaster films, borrowing heavily from The Poseidon Adventure.  The actors did a very credible job, and about five of them had very good singing voices.  It still impresses me with how much local talent we have.

In more mundane news, I managed to get my lanai bench re-stained during a lull in the wet weather, and we managed to work out at PF on Tuesday. We had a beach picnic afterward, and again on Thursday in lieu of golf. I've also been dealing with a couple of techno-troubles, but I think I'll wait until next week to fill you in on them.

Take care. Keep that frostbite kit handy.