report

Online Rainfall Atlas of Hawaiʻi

Giambelluca, Thomas W. et al.

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2013

water ecology data
Definitive rainfall data for Hawaiʻi; source for the 97% precipitation gradient analysis from Puʻu Kukui to Lahaina coast

The Rainfall Atlas provides the foundational precipitation data used throughout the thesis’s regional-scale analysis. Upper elevations receive over 300 inches annually while the coastal town receives less than 15 — one of the steepest rainfall gradients on Earth. This data establishes that the water sustaining Lahaina does not fall on Lahaina but falls miles away and thousands of feet up, creating dependency on conveyance infrastructure whose failure during the 2023 fire proved fatal. The thesis uses this data to define three elevation bands correlated with precipitation for the buffer framework.