If you don’t live in Hawaii, you might not know about the rainy weather we’ve had the past few days.

Heavy rain and occasional flooding didn’t deter the campers at Swanzy Beach Park this weekend.

Here’s an example of how weird it has been. We have friends who were surfing at Kahana Bay, just up the road a mile or so, on Thursday when a rain squall hit. The pelting rain turned out to also deliver little bits of ice. Yes, surfing in a hail storm in Hawaii!

Meda and I haven’t seen hail, but we have seen a lot of rain. Our first attempt to return to Kaaawa Saturday afternoon failed when we got to Kahaluu and were faced with at least a foot of water flowing across the highway. We decided our little Prius would not enjoy crossing the river, especially since one friend totaled their car under similar circumstances, and another racked up about $8,000 in repairs. Bumper to bumper traffic was backed up on Kamehameha Highway all the way to Ahuimanu.

We turned around, retreating to Windward Mall for an hour or so before trying again. The water had receded by the time we reached Kahaluu on our second approach, and we felt lucky to be able to get home at all.

Hopefully Kam Highway will be passable today so that we can do some shopping for dinner….