© The Weather ChannelRecord flooding in Hawaii in April 2018.
The incredible rainfall event place in mid-April in Hawaii. A site in northern Kauai, Waipa, recorded 49.69 inches in the 24-hour period ending at 12:45 p.m. April 15 (local time).
Data from this gauge will be carefully reviewed by the National Climatic Extremes Committee to determine whether this instrument is reliable enough to accept as a new U.S. record.
The current U.S. 24-hour rainfall record is 43 inches at Alvin, Texas, from July 25-26, 1979, during Tropical Storm Claudette.
If this recent event of almost 50 inches is certified, this would also break the current state 24-hour rainfall record for Hawaii, which is 38 inches at Kilauea on Jan. 24-25, 1956.
The National Weather Service office in Honolulu noted that the rain gauge where this new data was downloaded from "is operated by the Waipa Foundation which is a non-profit organization. Data from the gauge are not telemetered for real-time display and are used for watershed modeling and monitoring studies."
This recent rainfall in Hawaii caused floods that destroyed homes and forced hundreds to evacuate. Those who were evacuated were warned that they'd be away from their homes indefinitely because landslides continue to block Kuhio Highway on Kauai's north shore, according to the Associated Press.
Flooding and rainfall of this magnitude may remind many of Hurricane Harvey. For perspective, the maximum 24-hour rainfall during Harvey approached 30 inches, according to David Roth, meteorologist with NOAA's Weather Prediction Center.
Hawaii is no stranger to heavy rainfall events. One location in Hawaii holds the records for the most rain in a single month and year, Puu Kukui on the island of Maui.
In March 1942, 101 inches of rainfall was recorded at this site and in 1982 more than 58 feet of rain fell that year, alone.
Comment: The world is seeing a rapid upsurge in extreme weather according to a recent report. For more information on these events from around the world, check out our Earth Changes Summaries. The latest video: SOTT Earth Changes Summary - March 2018: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs
To understand how and why these extreme weather events are occurring read Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection by Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadczyk.