Hawaii Braces for 15-Inch Rain as Moke Compounds Lala Recovery

Hawaii is absorbing two tropical systems in a single week — and the second one has not even arrived. As Tropical Storm Moke churns toward the Big Island with up to 15 inches of forecast rain, communities are still digging out from Hurricane Lala's 43.54-inch deluge. For climate and energy audiences, the takeaway is less about a single storm than about what back-to-back precipitation extremes mean for saturated ground, crippled drainage, and an electric grid still 11,630 customers short of restoration.

Tropical Storm Moke formed Friday, August 21, 2026, in the Pacific Ocean, and is on track to deliver another round of heavy rain and wind to Hawaii at precisely the moment residents are still digging out from Hurricane Lala. According to the National Hurricane Center, Moke was located about 660 miles southeast of Hilo and moving west-northwest at 9 mph, with maximum sustained winds near 45 mph. The system is expected to reach the Big Island late Saturday and continue westward across the island chain through early Tuesday.

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As Tropical Storm Moke churns toward the Big Island with up to 15 inches of forecast rain, communities are still digging out from Hurricane Lala's 43.54-inch deluge.

The timing is what elevates this from a routine Pacific storm to a compounding-disaster scenario. Hurricane Lala battered Hawaii last weekend without ever making landfall, yet still downed trees, left roads covered in mud and rock, and produced a staggering 43.54 inches of rain along the Big Island's northeast coast. That flooding swept dozens of homes from their foundations and damaged roads and bridges. As of Friday, roughly 11,630 customers on the Big Island remained without power, according to poweroutage.us — a concrete measure of how incomplete the recovery remains as the next system approaches.

For Moke, forecasters again expect the Big Island to bear the brunt. Casey Oswant, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Honolulu, said the southeast and windward sides could see 5 to 10 inches of rain, with isolated totals up to 15 inches. The rest of the island chain is forecast to receive 1 to 2 inches, while parts of east Maui could see up to 4 inches. Oswant cautioned that impacts "will probably be a little bit more limited than what we saw with Lala," but emphasized that windward and southeast exposures still face meaningful risk. No coastal watches or warnings were in effect Friday morning, though residents were urged to monitor the storm closely.

The central hazard is not the wind speed — Moke is a modest tropical storm — but the interaction between fresh rainfall and terrain that is already saturated, scarred, and partially unrepaired. Heavy rain falling on steep, waterlogged slopes raises the probability of life-threatening flooding and mudslides, particularly where Lala's damage has compromised drainage and slope stability. The National Weather Service explicitly flagged dangerous rip currents, flooding, and mudslides, especially in steep areas. Even comparatively moderate totals can trigger outsized damage when the ground has little remaining absorption capacity.

There is a broader lesson in the fact that both Lala and now Moke are inflicting significant harm without making landfall. Storm impacts in Hawaii are driven heavily by orographic rainfall — moist tropical air forced upward by volcanic terrain — which can concentrate extreme precipitation on windward slopes far from the storm's center. This pattern complicates public risk perception and preparedness, because a system that never "hits" can still be the most damaging event of the season.