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People in hard-hit areas of Oahu and Maui told to evacuate with still more rain expected over the weekend

As Hawaii endures its worst flooding in more than 20 years, officials urged people in hard-hit areas to “LEAVE NOW”. That warning early on Saturday came after heavy rains fell on soil already saturated by downpours from a winter storm a week ago, and still more was expected over the weekend.

Muddy floodwaters smothered vast stretches of Oahu’s North Shore, a community renowned for its big-wave surfing. Raging waters lifted homes and cars and prompted evacuation orders for 5,500 people north of Honolulu. Authorities cautioned that a 120-year-old dam could fail.

“The remaining access road out of Waialua is at high risk of failure if rainfall continues,” an emergency alert said.

On the island of Maui, authorities upgraded an evacuation advisory to a warning for some parts of Lahaina, which is still reeling from a deadly 2023 wildfire, because of retention basins nearing capacity.

North Shore Oahu residents who did not evacuate were heartened in the morning by receding waters and moments of blue sky, but more rain was on the way.

“Don’t let your guard down just yet,” said Tina Stall, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Honolulu. “There’s still potential for more flooding impacts.”

Racquel Achiu, a Waialua farmer who stayed to care for her livestock, found her goats in knee-high water Thursday night, and an hour later, her family’s seven dogs were in danger of drowning in an elevated kennel. Her nephew and son-in-law rushed out into chest-high water to save them.

“My dogs’ heads were literally just sticking out of the water,” Achiu said. “There was so much water, I cannot even express.”

Governor Josh Green said the cost of the storm could top $1bn, including damage to airports, schools, roads, homes and a Maui hospital in Kula.

“This is going to have a very serious consequence for us as a state,” Green said at a news conference. He also said his chief of staff spoke to the White House and received assurances of federal support.

Green said the flooding was the state’s most serious since 2004, when homes and a University of Hawaii library were swamped.

Dozens and perhaps hundreds of homes have been damaged, but officials have yet to fully assess the destruction. Some 5,500 people were under evacuation orders.

Officials blamed some of the devastation on the sheer amount of rain that fell in a short amount of time on saturated land. Parts of Oahu received 8 to 12in (20 to 30cm), the National Weather Service said.

More than 200 people were rescued from the rising waters, authorities said, but no deaths were reported and no one was unaccounted for. Crews searched by air and by water for stranded people.

Winter storm systems known as “Kona lows”, which feature southerly or south-westerly winds that bring in moisture-laden air, have been responsible for the deluges in the past two weeks. The intensity and frequency of heavy rains in Hawaii have increased amid human-caused global heating, experts say.

Officials have been closely watching the Wahiawa dam, which has been vulnerable for decades, saying it was “at risk of imminent failure”.

Water levels in the dam about 17 miles (28km) north-west of Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, receded by late Friday and then went up again with overnight rain.

However the dam appeared to be less of a concern the following morning than the “breadth of hazardous conditions” across the island, said Molly Pierce, a spokesperson for Oahu’s department of emergency management.

She noted substantial flooding including in residential parts of Honolulu.

“We’re seeing the waters receding in a lot of places, but again with that saturation, just the smallest amount of water can bring those raging back up,” Pierce said. “So even if it’s blue skies where you are, I think we all know in Hawaii that if rain is falling on the mountain, it’s coming to you soon enough.”

HONOLULU — Evacuation orders were lifted for residents of Oahu who had been told to flee earlier Saturday as a flood-producing storm moves east, the Oahu Department of Emergency Management said.

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However, the threat from the "Kona low" storm was still serious enough that flash floods were possible from Oahu to the Big Island through Sunday afternoon, the National Weather Service said.

Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe and the Big Island were under a flash flood watch through that time, the Maui Emergency Management Agency said.

The Kona Low storm drenched soil already saturated by downpours from a similar low pressure system a week ago, prompting officials to urge residents of hard-hit areas to “LEAVE NOW" earlier Saturday.

Muddy floodwaters smothered vast stretches of Oahu’s North Shore, a community world-renowned for its big-wave surfing. Raging waters lifted homes and cars and prompted evacuation orders for 5,500 people north of Honolulu. Authorities cautioned that a 120-year-old dam could fail. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning early Saturday with light to moderate showers expected to turn heavy in some places.

Gov. Josh Green said the cost of the storm could top $1 billion, including damage to airports, schools, roads, people’s homes and a Maui hospital in Kula.

“This is going to have a very serious consequence for us as a state,” Green said at a news conference.

In a video posted on X, Green said that more rain is expected in Oahu and Maui over the weekend, where there will be continued concerns about flooding. "Hawaiʻi — we are still in this," Green wrote in the caption of the video.

Most of the state remained under a under a flood watch Saturday evening, with more dire flash flood warnings for parts of Oahu expired and parts of the Big Island remaining under such a warning through noon Sunday local time, according to the National Weather Service.

Maui was also under a flash flood warning, meaning dangerous flooding is imminent, through 9 p.m. local time, the weather service said.

"Radar indicated heavy showers and thunderstorms redeveloping over West Maui, with rain falling at rates of 1 to 2 inches per hour," it said early Saturday night. "Flooding remains ongoing."

On Saturday morning, an emergency alert had warned an Oahu North Shore community to flee.

“Residents in the Waialua area are strongly urged to LEAVE NOW,” it said. “The remaining access road out of Waialua is at high risk of failure if rainfall continues.”

Sirens eventually warned residents in the area to leave. Yet Sienna Creasy told NBC News that she woke up to screams from her neighbors in Waialua hours before any alarms went off.

Creasy moved to higher ground, where she said she had a "bird's eye view of the chaos" and could hear someone next door calling out for help. She tracked down his address and posted it to social media. "I posted it to every message board I could find, because his house was floating down into our neighbor’s house, and he’s in there, and he’s screaming for help,” Creasy said.

Locals with construction equipment loaded people into the buckets of their tractors, while those with no where to go drove aimlessly through floodwater, Creasy said.

Green said his chief of staff spoke to the White House and received assurances the islands would have federal support.

Most serious flooding since 2004

No deaths were reported and no one was unaccounted for. More than 200 people have been rescued, officials said. About 10 people were taken to a hospital with hypothermia, he said.

Crews searched by air and by water for people who had been stranded — efforts that were hampered by people flying personal drones to get images of the flooding, said Ian Scheuring, a spokesperson for Honolulu.

The National Guard and Honolulu Fire Department airlifted 72 children and adults who had been attending a spring break youth camp at a retreat on Oahu’s west coast called Our Lady of Kea’au, according to city and camp officials. The camp is on high ground but authorities didn’t want to leave them there, the mayor said.

Green said the flooding was the state’s most serious since 2004 floods in Manoa inundated homes and a University of Hawaii library.

Dozens — if not hundreds — of homes were damaged Friday but officials haven’t been able to fully assess the destruction, Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi said. Some 5,500 people were under evacuation orders.

“There’s no question that the damage done thus far has been catastrophic,” he said.

The Oahu Department of Emergency Management on Saturday amplified a regional boil water recommendation for tap water in parts of the island, including Waialua, Haleiwa, Sunset, Pupukea, Waialee and Turtle Bay "due to potential damage to the water system caused by the storm."

Officials blamed some of the devastation on the sheer amount of rain that fell in a short amount of time on saturated land. Parts of Oahu received 8 to 12 inches of rain overnight. Kaala, the island’s highest peak, got nearly 16 inches in the past day, the National Weather Service said.

More rain was expected: Blangiardi said 6 to 8 inches of rain was forecast to fall on Oahu in the next two to three days.

The “Kona lows,” which feature southerly or southwesterly winds that bring in moisture-laden air, were responsible for the deluges in the past two weeks. The intensity and frequency of heavy rains in Hawaii have increased amid human-caused global warming, experts say.

Eyes on an aging dam

Officials have been closely watching the Wahiawa dam, which has been vulnerable for decades, saying it was “at risk of imminent failure.”

Water levels in the dam — about 17 miles northwest of Honolulu, on the island of Oahu — receded by late Friday but that could change if more rain falls.

Overnight into Friday, the dam went from 79 feet to 84 feet — just 6 feet shy of what it can handle, authorities said. After peaking at more than 85 feet, the water level had dropped by early Saturday to 81.5 feet, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Waialua resident Carly Meyers told NBC News that she woke up to about a foot of water in her children's playroom at 1:30 am on Friday. She evacuated to a local high school, which then was evacuated due to the threat of dam failure.

“Seems like most people on other states aren’t seeing anything about the floods on the news,” Meyers said. “But most our community is under water.”

The state has said Wahiawa dam has “high hazard potential,” and that a failure “will result in probable loss of human life.”

The earthen dam was built in 1906 to increase sugar production for the Waialua Agricultural Company, which eventually became a subsidiary of Dole Food Company. It was reconstructed following a collapse in 1921.

The state has sent Dole four notices of deficiency about the dam since 2009 and five years ago fined the company $20,000 for failing to address safety deficiencies on time, according to records.

Afterward, Dole proposed to donate the dam, reservoir and ditch system to the state in exchange for the state’s agreement to repair the spillway to meet and maintain dam safety standards.

The state passed legislation in 2023 authorizing the dam’s acquisition. It also provided $5 million to buy the spillway and $21 million to repair and expand it to comply with dam safety requirements. But the transfer has not been completed. A state board is due to vote on the acquisition next week.

“The dam continues to operate as designed with no indications of damage,” Dole said in an emailed statement.

The state regulates 132 dams across Hawaii, most of them built as part of irrigation systems for the sugar cane industry, according to a 2019 infrastructure report by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

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The Associated Press

The Associated Press

Dennis Romero

Dennis Romero is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.

Nollaig O'Connor and Linda Takahashi contributed.

Hawaii remains under a statewide flood watch after a severe storm hit the state and prompted officials to order evacuations.

The potential for flash floods threaten the island of Oahu and parts of Maui County, Governor Josh Green said on Saturday.

The storm that struck this weekend is the second severe weather event to hit the archipelago in the last week.

Some parts of the state received 40 to 50in (127cm) of rain in the last 10 days, according to Green. Oahu could receive four to six more, while parts of Maui could experience between four to 12in, he said.

"Don't take this storm lightly," Green said in a video statement. No deaths had been reported, he said, but there have been few serious injuries.

The state has activated a programme for people displaced by the storm that allows them to get discounted hotel rates.

In a subsequent post, the governor warned that, because the ground had already been saturated by the earlier rainfall, "it will take much less rain to trigger flooding, road closures and damage".

The damage from the storms could exceed $1bn (£745m), according to Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi.

More than 230 people have been rescued so far, Blangiardi told a news conference on Friday.

The authorities warned that a dam in Oahu, the state's most populous island, was at risk of collapse. Blangiardi urged residents to "stay safe" and "take the storm as seriously as you can".

Speaking at Friday's news conference, he praised the emergency workers working to keep people safe.

Rising floodwaters lifted homes and cars and triggered evacuation orders for some 5,500 people north of the state's capital city, Honolulu. Roads have been closed across the islands.

Honolulu Department of Emergency Management has issued multiple flash flood warnings and urged residents to move to higher ground and avoid flooded areas.

Flood watch warnings have also been issued for Maui, Molokai and The Big Island.

Green has said the storm would have a "serious consequence for us as a state" because it had caused enormous damage to airports, schools, roads and hospitals, as well as people's homes.

"This is the largest flood that we've had in Hawaii in 20 years," he told the news conference on Friday.

The governor urged residents to seek out shelters and assembly areas across the state.

The island was in the grip of a "Kona Low", a slow-moving area of low pressure that pulls in warm, moisture-rich air across the Hawaiian islands, bringing heavy rain and flash flooding.

Some areas received more than 10in of rainfall and winds of up to 100mph (160km/h).

The storm is the latest challenge for the island, which frequently deals with the fallout of natural disasters such as the 2023 Lahaina wildfires, which left more than 100 people dead.

Additional reporting by BBC Weather

The flooding comes amid kona storms, Hawaii's winter cyclones. All of the islands are under a flood watch until the afternoon of March 22.

Catastrophic flooding keeps hitting Hawaii as two back-to-back storms pummeled the islands with rain and damaging winds.

Authorities say it's the worst flooding the state has seen in 20 years, as torrents of water wash out homes, damage roads and threaten to bust through a dam.

The threat of the dam failure in northern Oahu prompted an emergency evacuation of thousands on the morning of March 20. The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency later clarified that the 120-year-old dam had not failed but “is at imminent risk of failure.”

Evacuations were ordered for Haleʻiwa and Waialua, where an alert warned that all roads out are at risk of "imminent failure."

"LEAVE NOW," the alert said.

Gov. Josh Green said there have been no deaths or people unaccounted for during the flooding, but called it the worst the state has seen since the early 2000s. Some 200 people have been rescued from the flooding and about 10 presented at hospitals with hypothermia, he said.

"This is a major threat to our people and to our state," Green said at a news conference March 20.

The morning of March 21, the National Weather Service in Honolulu said two systems are continuing to drive rain (sometimes as heavy as 2 to 4 inches per hour), thunderstorms and an increased risk of flash flooding through the weekend. A flood watch was in place for the whole state through the afternoon of March 22.

The dam is in Central Oahu near the Schofield Barracks, off the Kamehameha Highway. Assembly areas had been established for people required to evacuate or who were unable to get home. Oahu (Honolulu County) has 13 dams, according to USA TODAY's dam-tracking database. Of those, seven have a "high" or "significant" hazard potential classification. The Wahiawa dam is private, built in 1906 and used primarily for irrigation. It's considered in poor condition, with a high hazard potential.

Water in the Kaukonahua Stream near Wailua just northwest of the reservoir rose more than 10.5 feet on March 20, several inches higher than it had reached on March 13, according to weather service data.

On March 20, the weather service reported that a foot of water was flowing over a road one mile east of Waialua, inundating several cars and homes. “Civilians had to be rescued and transported on a bulldozer,” the bulletin stated.

Kona storms – Hawaii's winter cyclones

A series of low pressure systems have struck Hawaii in March. They're a winter phenomenon, often called kona lows or kona storms, for the Hawaiian word "kona" for leeward. The winter storms typically impact the leeward side of the islands that are usually sheltered from tradewinds and intense rains, according to Steven Businger, a professor in the meteorology department at the University of Hawaii.

On average, one to two kona storms impact Hawaii during the November-to-March season, but it's very rare for two to form within the same month, let alone within a week, AccuWeather meteorologists said.

The first round of storms impacted the islands from March 10 to March 16, the outlet reported. It brought local rainfall totals of over 4 feet.

Worst flooding in 20 years

The flooding in Hawaii is the worst the state has seen since the 2004 Manoa Flood, Green said. A flood on Oct. 30, 2004, was one of several flash floods amid a storm that brought heavy rain. Rain peaked at a rate of 1.29 inches in a 15-minute span and 8.71 inches in 6 hours.

Manoa Stream overflowed in several areas. The worst flooding happened when a flood wave tore through a residential area and onto the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus. Floodwaters destroyed irreplaceable documents in the basement of Hamilton Library and caused damage to several laboratories with critical experiments, according to the National Weather Service.

No deaths or injuries were reported, but damage reached about $85 million at the time. About 120 homes were damaged, and a foot bridge over Manoa Stream was destroyed.

Damage from the March 2026 flooding could total $1 billion, Green said. That includes damage to numerous homes, roads, schools, airports and a hospital on Maui, he said.

One home on Kaihulo Drive in Mokuleia near Waialua was swept onto the beach in a flash flood on the morning of March 20.

"Remnants of the house appear to be split in half, and parts of the house appear to have collapsed," according to a storm report from the weather service.

A road in Makaha Valley on Oahu was closed in both directions March 20 after part of it collapsed, sending vehicles over the edge, another storm report said.

Flooding across Oahu is now the worst Hawaii has seen in over 20 years. More than 230 people have been rescued so far. Some 5,500 people remain under evacuation orders in part because of rising water levels at the Wahiawa dam.

Dozens — if not hundreds — of homes were damaged Friday but officials haven't been able to fully assess the destruction, Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi said. Damage estimates have hit $1 billion and are climbing, with homes, roads, schools, airports and a Maui hospital all impacted.

Emergency crews are still conducting search-and-rescue operations.

The National Guard and Honolulu Fire Department airlifted 72 children and adults who had been attending a spring break youth camp in affected areas.

This round of flooding rain is being caused by a Kona low located north of Hawaii, but repeated rounds of rain and their resulting rainfall runoff since last week's heavy rain continue to escalate flood worries and concerns that the Wahiawa dam will be overtopped even as rain slows.

Kona lows are low pressure systems that reverse the winds across the Hawaiian islands, causing heavy rainfall and gusty winds in communities that don't typically have such foul weather.

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At least 10 people have been hospitalized for hypothermia.

Parts of Oahu have seen 8-12 inches of rain with several more inches expected this weekend.

Officials are monitoring the 120-year-old Wahiawa dam, which is near critical levels and at risk of failing.

Officials have told residents to leave the area immediately as the dam "may collapse or breach at any time." The warning adds that residents should carpool because of heavy traffic on the island.

The area north of Honolulu has been inundated by heavy rain and catastrophic flash flooding has hit the island of Oahu.

Emergency sirens blared along Oahu’s famed North Shore, where rising waters also damaged homes. Honolulu officials issued a “LEAVE NOW” evacuation order at 5:35 a.m. Friday for Waialua and Haleiwa: “Extremely dangerous flooding and Wahiawa Dam is high.”

The North Shore of Oahu has been under flash flood warnings since early Friday morning.

A series of low pressure systems continues to dredge up tropical Pacific moisture and fling that moisture over the Hawaiian Islands. Given the very heavy rainfall in the first of these Kona lows last weekend in addition to these smaller system, the rainfall has really added up. Without an extended break, this flooding could continue for a while.

According to senior digital meteorologist Jonathan Belles, "This flooding in some ways is connected to the heat dome entrenched into the Lower 48. We often talk when one area of the country is seeing heat, another is seeing cooler, wetter weather." Belles adds, "Right now, the West is seeing heat and the East is seeing slightly stormier weather. Well, that pattern continues west, too. That cooler, wetter weather persists over Hawaii and into Alaska. Until some major storm system can shove this pattern into a different gear or the pattern can slowly break down, this flooding and heat will persist."

The Hawaii National Guard has been activated in response to the flooding. Gov. Josh Green says, "The storm of course is very severe right now, particularly on the northern part of Oahu." He added, "It's going to be a very touch-and-go-day."

Most of the state remains under a flood watch.

Portions of this report are from the Associated Press.