The hurricane churning in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii is forecast to follow a similar path to the only two hurricanes to ever make official landfall in the islands.
Hurricane Lowell was south of the island chain and moving to the west on Friday, and is expected to take a right-hand turn toward Hawaii over the weekend, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Hurricane Dot veered in the same direction in 1959, as did Iniki in 1992. Those destructive storms made landfall with their centers, or eyes, crossing over Kauai.
On Friday, most of the weather models that help experts predict a hurricane’s path showed Lowell missing land and staying west of Kauai. Even on this track the storm is expected to bring rain, wind and big waves to the islands, especially as it nears land on Monday as a major hurricane. Forecasters warned that there was still significant uncertainty over the storm’s path and that it could shift toward the east in the coming days.
“It’s too close for comfort,” said Cary Mock, a professor of geography at the University of South Carolina who researches historical climatology. “There are still five days to go though, and models can change.”
While hurricanes are common in the Pacific Ocean, they rarely make landfall in Hawaii. The island chain is a small target. Kauai, for example, is only about 30 miles across and 25 miles long. The odds that any storm in the vast Pacific Ocean would hit it are low.
But in 1959, the unlikely happened, when Dot blasted across Kauai as a Category 1 storm. Powerful winds lifted entire homes and knocked over trees that blocked roadways, The Honolulu Advertiser reported.
Iniki did the same thing, with more force, in 1992. A Category 4 hurricane, it hurled 20-foot waves over roadways, crushed homes and clawed off the lush vegetation for which the Garden Island is named.
JoAnn Yukimura was mayor of Kauai County at the time, and she recalled suddenly being called off a stage at a fund-raiser in Honolulu the night before Iniki hit.
Ms. Yukimura said a colleague had phoned her and said: “It looks like there has been a turn in the direction of the hurricane. You need to come back. I’m opening the emergency operating center now.”
By midnight, she was at the center, and she stayed up much of the night preparing the island.
Even if Lowell does not make landfall, its impacts could be significant — as was the case with Iwa in 1982. That storm approached from the south and passed by Kauai as a Category 1 hurricane, damaging over 11,000 homes, displacing 500 people and causing over $300 million in damage on Kauai, Oahu and Niihau.
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