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On August 15, Hurricane Lala struck Hawaiʻi, hitting the Big Island with up to 43 inches of rain and winds that reached 130 mph. Although it never made direct landfall on the island, the storm passed very close and caused significant damage. Three people were killed and many roads were washed away.
The Kaʻū region on the southern tip of the island suffered most of the damage, including the many smallholder coffee producers who farm the region. “Thousands of trees are down, a lot of it just washed away completely, and the road is completely destroyed,” Alla Kostenko, who owns an estate called A Coffee Farm, told SFGate.
Kaʻū has about 500 acres of coffee farms, and producers were getting ready for the area’s annual harvest.
The Kona region also saw damage from the hurricane, although not as much as in Kaʻū. “Some farmers are reporting the loss of 20% or more of their coffee trees, mostly caused by larger downed trees,” Abigail Munoz, executive director of the Hawaiʻi Coffee Association, told Hawaii Public Radio.
Many are still without power and water from Lala, while some farms are still recovering from the impact of the Kona low storms that hit Hawaiʻi in March, destroying trees and causing $15 million in damage. Farmers are also dealing with the fallout after an earthquake in July destroyed many water catchment tanks. And just a week after Lala, Tropical Storm Moke brought even more rain to the islands.
Kostenko said there’s not much to do but start the recovery process. “A lot of the farmers are obviously going to persevere and just continue doing whatever they’ve been doing for, you know, decades,” she said. “You know, you just roll up your sleeves and you continue going.”
Part of the reason we’re seeing so much storm activity in Hawai’i i is due to this year’s “Super” El Niño. Occurring roughly every two to seven years, El Niño is a Pacific climate pattern that can bring increased droughts, storms, and floods to many regions around the world. El Niño tends to result in a quieter Atlantic hurricane season, but can strengthen Pacific storms. According to new research, El Niño is getting stronger—and more destructive—because of climate change.
The study found that modern El Niños are 36% stronger than they were 40 years ago, which the authors say points to climate change being the culprit. “If I get pushback on that, I would like to know what the alternative is,” lead author Julia Cole said in a press release.
Climate change is also fueling other catastrophes around the globe, many of which threaten coffee production. Indonesia is dealing with several wildfires across the archipelago, with thousands of firefighters battling blazes that span more than 107,000 hectares. The fires threatened coffee plantations in East Java and South Sumatra, according to local news reports. Indonesia is the world’s fourth-largest coffee grower. The USDA predicts that its output will fall 8% over the coming year because of excessive rainfall.
The deadly flash floods that hit the Nepal-Tibet border last week also impacted the region’s small but growing coffee production. In Nepal’s Rasuwa district, many farms were completely washed away. “It was filled with coffee farms,” a witness told Agence France-Presse. “It’s all gone.” In the Nuwakot district, another witness described similar scenes. Experts said a melting glacier, driven by climate change, contributed to the flooding. Rescue workers continue to search for thousands of missing people.
Read the full story on the impact of Hurricane Lala from Hawaiʻi Public Raido here.
Photo by PROJETO CAFÉ GATO-MOURISCO on Unsplash
