The winter time is Maui’s rainy season. That doesn’t mean the island is socked in by bad weather all the time. Instead, we tend to have beautiful weather interspersed by large cold fronts that drop down from the Northern Pacific. These weather systems draw up moisture from the deep tropics to our south. It is something of an interesting phenomenon in that the front comes from the North, but the rain usually hits the drier south and west sides of the island first. For our leeward coastlines, this is the primary source of precipitation throughout the year. While these storms bring welcome moisture, they can also deliver heavy sustained rains that cause flooding. We just experienced a pretty intense Kona storm over the last couple of days. I used my flip to shoot a few sites and sounds from the storm around Paia.

Paia saw some small scale flooding along streets, parking lots and in some of the parks. Most of the video shown was from well after the peak waters. That being said, Paia fared pretty well overall. A few other parts of the island saw bigger flash floods that led to road closures and flooding at some private residences. The good news is that we had a beautiful sunny day today to help dry out our soggy island.