A raging thunderstorm did gener-ate a tornado that touched down in Waimea on Saturday night, January 8.
That’s the decision announced this week by weather forecasters from the National Weather Service.
The storm produced 60 mile-per-hour winds in Lawa‘i that caused serious damage to the grounds of the National Tropical Botanical Garden.
Tours of the lush garden grounds are still being canceled.
The Waimea tornado knocked down trees and destroyed a car-port along Menehune Road and the Waimea River, forecasters said, but no one reported injuries.
That night back in Lawa‘i, the dam-aging winds ripped roofs off build-ings, and toppled huge monkeypod trees at the Lawa‘i gardens. The storm also produced hail in Kalaheo and in Waimea.
“It’s no doubt that storm was tor-nadic as it came across the ocean,” said NWS Warning Coordination Meteorologist Nazette Rydell of the cold front that passed through Kaua‘i not long after sunset. “It was a very strong storm system that’s unusual” for Hawai‘i.
Rydell said that while it may be once in every four to five years that Kaua‘i receives a storm this powerful, the U.S. Mainland is well-versed in this type of severe weather.
In fact, this line was identical to systems that usually affect the Central Plains and eastern parts of the U.S. during spring and summer, forecasters said.
“They are not rare, but they are unusual,” Rydell said. “We don’t usually get them this strong (this far south) that of-ten.”
“We were really lucky,” she added. “If we were a solid (mass), the damage would have been much worse.”
The strongest parts of the storm skirted between Kaua‘i and Oahu, producing a large hail and a water spout that last-ed a few minutes, forecasters said, after analyzing radar data from the event.
“Sometimes it’s good to be small islands in the middle of the ocean,” Rydell added.
Tornado or not, the winds caused some serious damage at NTBG.
“A tornado is not out of the realm of possibility” in Lawa‘i, Rydell said, but “based on pic-tures that I saw and based on the radar imagery, I would lean more towards a downburst” which can be even more devas-tating than a tornado.
Downbursts are winds that come from the tops of the thun-derstorms, dropping straight to the ground and then can dis-perse in a variety of directions, Rydell said. They can reach up to 60-90 miles per hour.
“It was a fierce, destructive storm,” she said.
In Lawa‘i, NTBG workers are still reeling from it over two weeks later, and that severe weather coupled with a flood that damaged portions of Aller-ton Garden on New Year’s Day.
“We’ve been playing Mur-phy’s Law lately,” said Phyllis Segawa, NTBG Visitor Pro-gram Manager.
The popular Allerton Garden tour is still closed thanks to the damage, and the normally self-guided tour through McBryde Garden has become a guided tour until Allerton is reopened, Segawa said.
They hope to be up and run-ning normally by next week.
