Flash flood warnings aren’t typically something to get excited about. If you’ll remember, last week started off with “impactful weather” in parts of Hawaii, which included blizzard-like conditions on the Big Island’s tallest summits. The same cold front that prompted the National Weather Service to call out high winds and heavier-than-normal snowfall at elevation also meant some pretty extreme conditions were headed to other parts of Hawaii, ranging from high surf to heavy rainfall and those flash-flood warnings.
That sounds like chaos. But when Jamie O’Brien sees the first signs of those flash floods, he knows the Waimea River is about to go off. People showed up where the river empties into Waimea Bay in droves last week and were treated to a sight. “The biggest river ever. Guaranteed,” J.O.B. declared before seeing it all for himself.
There was definitely a lot of water flowing out into the bay. A lot. O’Brien got sucked out into the shorebreak at a point where the river wave was breaking well overhead and eventually, the session had to end from logs and debris floating through the river.
“It was just too much water. I’m just not used to riding that much water, ” he said afterward. “This thing literally blew out like a hundred yards across.”
Overhead and hanging on for dear life just moments before getting smoked.
