i L i n d . n e t

News of the day is rain. It has rained steadily since about 12:30 a.m., most of the time with an accompaniment of thunder and lightning. Three cats are unaccounted for–Toby, Annie and Harriet. Toby is certainly hiding at his “other house” just up the street. I think Harriet is under the house and just unable to get upstairs without going into the deluge. Annie, well, I hope she has a protected spot. I haven’t checked her sleeping spot under the bed, and it’s possible she’s there. I hope so, as it is very, very wet outside.

[update: Annie came crawling out from under the bed at 6:22 a.m., so now it's just Harry that I'm worried about. That's a 50 percent relief. Toby still isn't here but I'm not worried about him because I know where he is....Second update (9:30 a.m.) Harriet showed up a few minutes ago, screaming loudly from the front deck. She was mostly dry, not muddy, and I can't figure out where she was hiding out. So only Toby remains potentially exposed to the elements.]

Here’s what it looked like on the weather radar when I did the 2:15 house check. That red smear along the windward coast is us right here in Kaaawa. You can check our current status here.

The National Weather Service has this description along with its current flash flood warning:

* AT 410 AM HST…THUNDERSTORMS WITH HEAVY RAIN WERE CONTINUING OVER MUCH OF CENTRAL AND WINDWARD OAHU. A RAIN GAUGE IN PUNALUU RECORDED RAINFALL RATES IN EXCESS OF 3 INCHES PER HOUR. THE KAHANA STREAM GAUGE WAS APPROACHING FLOOD STAGE. THUS THE EARLIER WARNING FOR MAINLY SOUTHEAST OAHU IS BEING EXPANDED IN COVERAGE.

* OTHER LOCATIONS IN THE WARNING INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO PUNALUU… KAHUKU…HAUULA…LAIE…WAIALUA…MILILANI…AND WAHIAWA.

Kahana is just the next valley, and Punaluu the area just beyond that, only minutes away from here by car. So you get the idea.

We went down the street for dinner again last night, and the weather cooperated by staying dry long enough for an outdoor fest of home-made refried beans, enchiladas, habanero salsa, margaritas (“Tequila-Cuervo 1800 is the weapon of choice”), wine, salads, brownies, and assorted other self-inflicted culinary mayhem. I can’t claim credit for the cooking, as neighbor Doug slaved through the humid Kaaawa afternoon on the heavy kitchen lifting, and then two of our friends from town arrived with reinforcements of ceviche and a chicken for the grill, along with a touch more wine. Despite it all, we managed to stay just on the right side of moderation and were able to make the walk home without incident.

Yesterday provided another “two newspaper town” experience with competing reports on the expansion of locally available high definition television offerings.

The Star-Bulletin story by Erika Engle led with DirectTV’s addition of four local stations to the 72 HD channels it announced last month, which means that KGMB’s NFL football game today will be broadcast in HD on both DirectTV and Dish Network, but not on Oceanic Cable. The cable giant, which has a monopoly in Hawaii, is set to expand its 21 current HD channels to 31, but lags far behind DirectTV. Oceanic says it plans 50 HD channels by next year, according to Engle.

Meanwhile, the headline for the Advertiser story by Sean Hao gave Oceanic a big break: “Oceanic cable, DirectTV add more high-definition channels”. The lead paragraph announced Oceanic’s 10 channel expansion which is supposed to kick in on Monday. It continues with several quotes from Oceanic’s Alan Pollock, vp of marketing (disclosure: Alan is a former long ago neighbor of ours before we moved to Kaaawa). You had to read down to the seventh paragraph to find out that Oceanic’s 10 new channels still leave it far behind DirectTV’s 72 HD offerings, and there’s no mention of the missing HD version of the Channel 9 NFL broadcast, something with high relevance to football fans.

Lucky you live in a two newspaper town.

Now I’m waiting for a bit of light before I venture out with camera and umbrella to see what’s flooded and what’s not.