CALIFORNIA is far more disturbed about the current El Nino weather pattern than we are. Maybe we are too complacent. Hawaii’s vulnerability
to hurricanesHawaii has experienced hurricanes or near-misses from hurricanes in 1950, 1957, 1959 (Dot hit), 1972, 1978, 1982 (Iwa hit), 1992 (Iniki hit) and 1993. All but three of those years -- 1950, 1959 and 1978 -- were El Nino years, when warm Pacific equatorial waters shifting eastward produced special weather conditions, including both wet and dry spells and more hurricanes than usual.
Our protection has been that in the vast Pacific our relatively tiny islands are a small target but we have seen since 1950 that it is far from perfect protection.
We also know now from Weather Bureau surveys of old news clippings that hurricanes hit Hawaii in the 1860s and 1870s but were less noticed because there was immensely less potential for property damage.
Built-up modern Hawaii cannot take hurricane threats casually. Satellite photos showed Iniki whirling over Kauai in 1992 like a giant buzz-saw covering Kauai's entire width.
There are no known meteorological reasons why other islands can't be similarly hit. An 1871 hurricane hit the northern part of the Big Island and Maui. In both 1972 and 1993, hurricanes straddled the Hawaiian chain, all four of them a few hundred miles out but traveling past us in pairs.
Nina in 1957 disrupted air travel to and from Hawaii. Estelle in 1986 sent high surf to the Puna area of the Big Island but spared the home of Civil Defense Director Harry Kim.
My source is Thomas A. Schroeder, associate professor of meteorology at the University of Hawaii, who specializes in "severe weather" and its risk to life and property.
The 1997 El Nino is the strongest since 1982, the year Iwa hit. Equatorial ocean temperatures south of us are at a high variance from normal, up four to six degrees Fahrenheit.
Every four or five years the cycle shifts from El Nino's warm ocean temperatures to cooler La Nina temperatures, then back again. The cold variations seldom are as far from normal as the warm. Both, however, influence winds and rains as well as ocean currents.
Schroeder's prediction is for Hawaii to be rainy to mid-December, then to shift to dry for several months. And hurricanes? A one in 10 chance.
It would be foolish not to be prepared. Thanks to satellite and long-range radar data we can count on 24 to 48 hours' warning, usually enough to save lives and do what's possible in tidying up to minimize property damage.
Unfortunately we have some of the least-stringent building requirements in America. That means most single homeowners would be well-advised to move to a Civil Defense-recommended evacuation center in a major storm.
A UH building housed pets and all during Iniki -- families with dogs on one floor, families with cats on another, birds on another.
THE UH Department of Meteorology was formed in 1956. It now has a faculty of nine plus 36 graduate assistants. Its building is reasonably storm-proof.
In 1995 the U.S. Weather Service relocated to an adjacent wing designed to withstand the worst possible storms because it is the forecast office for most of the Pacific out to Guam, which also has a center. Its Hawaii staff numbers about 40. The two agencies cooperate fully -- a real coup for the UH School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology.
"El Nino and Its Consequences" will be the topic of a Phi Beta Kappa lecture at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at St. John's auditorium on Maile Way at the UH Manoa campus. The speaker will be emeritus Professor Klaus Wyrtki, considered the "grand old man" of El Nino research.