No one goes to Hawaii for the snow, but it actually snows there nearly every year. Only in a few places, though, like Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea, and Haleakala, the three highest points of all the islands. Right now, though, they’re looking at lot more snow than usual.
When most people think of the world’s tallest mountain, they probably think of Mount Everest. They’re wrong–well, partially wrong, at least. It all depends on where you’re measuring from. When Edmund Hillary first got to the summit (with poor Tenzig Norgay packing all his shit up there for him) in the ’50s, he figured it was around 29,000 feet. It’s actually 29,035, but he was pretty damn close. If measured from sea level, Mauna Loa comes in at a measly 13,600 feet, paling in comparison to Everest. But if one’s measuring from the base of the mountain, well… Mauna Loa is MASSIVE. The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory puts it around 56,000 ft. Surprisingly, its neighbor Mauna Kea has that beat, but not by much.
Since they’re not all that high above sea level and they look down over a tropical paradise, when there is snow at their peaks, it isn’t much–a few inches at most. But this winter, the National Weather Service is looking at a doozy of a storm and calling for up to two feet of snow at elevations above 12,000 feet. They’ve issued a winter storm warning, which is pretty rare in Hawaii. So is two feet of snow in Hawaii actually 12 feet?
Right now, workers at the top of Mauna Kea (which is where those incredibly complex telescopes sit) have their hands full keeping the roads clear from blowing snow. Winds are expected to hit 50 miles an hour, and the summit is closed to the public for the time being.
