Lala leaves one dead in Hawaii with heavy rain, winds to come

Emily Forgash and Brian K. Sullivan, Bloomberg News on Aug 16, 2026

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One person has died as storm Lala continues to batter Hawaii, potentially bringing nearly three feet of rain and damaging winds to parts of the state Sunday after narrowly missing landfall.

The storm got closest to the South Point area, where one person died in a car accident on Saturday, Hawaii Governor Josh Green said in a post on X.

Lala weakened from hurricane strength to a tropical storm on Sunday, but it’s still expected to produce additional rainfall of 1 to 3 inches (2.5 to 7.6 centimeters) across the Big Island and windward Maui, while maximum storm totals could reach 30 to 35 inches over the Big Island, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in a statement at 5 a.m. local time on Sunday.

“This rainfall will produce life-threatening flooding and mudslides, especially in areas of steep terrain,” the hurricane center said. “The combination of a dangerous storm surge and the tide will cause normally dry areas near the coast to be flooded by rising waters moving inland from the shoreline.”

Almost 130,000 Hawaii customers were without power Sunday morning, according to PowerOutage.com. About 52 flights into and out of Honolulu and Hilo were canceled on Sunday as of 10:50 a.m. in New York, according to FlightAware.

Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc., the state’s main utility company, said in a statement Saturday that once the weather improves, “damage assessments will need to be completed and repairs made before power can be restored.”

While the Big Island has gone more than a century without a hurricane strike, Hawaii isn’t immune to tropical storms. Hurricane Iniki struck Kauai in 1992, and the state has faced weaker tropical storms and near misses since then.

In 2023, Hurricane Dora passed far to the south, but helped set up wind patterns that fanned flames across Maui, where fires raged out of control and killed more than 100 people.

No hurricanes struck the U.S. in 2025 and so far only two tropical storms have struck the Gulf Coast in 2026. Super Typhoons Sinlaku and Bavi devastated the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands earlier this year.

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