At least 55 deaths have been confirmed and the damage to Lahaina, a town of around 13,000 people, looks well nigh irreparable
language, Lahaina means “cruel sun”. The north-east trade winds provide the eastern shore of Maui with ample rain and the West Maui mountains with a superfluity of it. But Lahaina, the capital of the Hawaiian kingdom in the 19th century, sits in the mountains’ rain shadow and so gets comparatively little. What is more, the rain that does fall does so almost entirely in winter: summers are hot and dry. As a result it is no stranger to fires.
On top of the drought, there is land-use change. Over the years a lot of agricultural land near Lahaina has been abandoned. Such land will typically see a rich growth of grasses and shrubs, including, in Hawaii, some invasive species which can outcompete the indigenous plants.
Dora passed Maui at a much greater distance, but it still brought with it strong winds. And they seem to have been strengthened by the fact that while the hurricane, an area of very low atmospheric pressure, was passing to the south of the island, there was an anomalous area of high pressure and oddly dry air to the north. Winds tend to move from high-pressure areas to low-pressure ones and the high pressure to the north seems to have strengthened the winds crossing Maui.
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