Hawaii Moved A Hurricane 22 Miles. It Pays By The Mile.
A storm due to cross the Big Island will pass south of it. Four aircraft flew 31 hours into its outer bands, on a state order that pays $184,000 a nautical mile.
HILO, Hawaii — At 21:10 Zulu on Saturday a twin turboprop left Kona and turned east-south-east towards a hurricane.
Three more followed it. Between them the four aircraft spent thirty-one hours in Hurricane Lowell's north-east quadrant at seventeen to nineteen thousand feet, flying racetrack legs of forty nautical miles, and burned 1,900 flares.
On Saturday morning the Central Pacific Hurricane Center had Lowell crossing the Big Island's east coast at Hilo on Tuesday. By Sunday night it had the storm passing south of Ka Lae, twenty-two nautical miles from where it had been, and a flood watch on every island in the chain.
The aircraft are on a purchase order. The purchase order pays by the mile.
The peg
The wire on Tuesday morning said Lowell was expected to pass near one Hawaiian island and bring major rain to all of them. Both halves are true. This story is about how the first half came to be true, and who pays for the second.
The aircraft
Two Beechcraft King Airs and two Cessna Caravans, all registered to Leeward Atmospherics LLC of Kailua-Kona. They broadcast their positions like any other aircraft, and we bought the tracks from a commercial aggregator for $860.
From 21:10Z Saturday to 20:05Z Sunday at least one of them was airborne. The pattern is a seeding pattern and nothing else: legs of forty miles, turns of two, flown along the inflow of the outer bands between 240 and 310 miles east-south-east of Hilo, upwind of the eyewall and never in it.
Marisol Tanaka-Bright, the company's chief pilot, flew nine of the thirty-one hours.
The track
We plotted every advisory from Friday to Monday ourselves rather than reading the cone. Advisory 9, at 03Z Saturday, had the centre crossing the coast at Hilo. Advisory 13, at 03Z Sunday, after the first eleven flight hours, had it eleven nautical miles further south. Advisory 16, at 21Z Sunday, had it twenty-two south, passing Ka Lae offshore. It has not moved since.
A forecast track does not move twenty-two miles in eighteen hours without the forecaster saying why. The discussion issued with advisory 13 gives the reason as "a persistent asymmetry in the outer convection". The aircraft were in the outer convection.
The man who did it in 1971
Project Stormfury seeded hurricanes from 1962 to 1983 and was closed, the textbooks say, because seeding the eyewall does nothing a hurricane does not do on its own.
Dr. Everard Kalani-Whitlock is eighty-four and flew on the Debbie sorties in 1969 and the Ginger sorties in 1971. He agrees about the eyewall.
"We were trying to weaken them and you cannot," he said. "By 1975 we had stopped trying. We were leaning on them instead, from the bands, and it worked well enough that by 1983 it was not research. It was a service. Research programmes close. Services get a purchase order."
His logbook stops in 1975. He says the flights did not.
The pooled trials in our vault, PX-1986, cover rain over flat ground and say the signal is small. Nobody has pooled the hurricane flights after 1975, because nobody published them.
The purchase order
It is on the state's procurement portal, where anyone can read it. Atmospheric Services, Tropical Cyclone Track Management, 2026 season. Ceiling $6.2 million. Awarded on Friday afternoon without competition under the emergency provision.
Line 1 is flight hours at $9,400. Line 2 is flares at $1,150 each. Line 3 is "track displacement, per nautical mile achieved, measured against the official forecast track at time of tasking", at $184,000 a mile.
Clause 11 excludes "consequential precipitation" from any claim against the operator.
Which mile
Tasking was 20:40Z Saturday. Advisory 11 was issued at 15Z and advisory 12 at 21Z. Nothing was issued at 20:40.
The operator measures from advisory 6 on Friday, the one attached to its quotation, which gives forty-one miles. The state measures from advisory 9, which gives twenty-two. Nineteen miles is $3.5 million.
Nobody we spoke to disputes that the storm moved. They dispute the ruler.
The rain
Clause 11 is why the whole chain is under a flood watch. Moisture that would have crossed one island in a day is crossing five in three, and the contract says in writing that this was foreseen. The state chose Hilo. Its administrator says so below, and says he would rather you heard it from him.
What this desk takes from it
That the argument about whether a hurricane can be moved ended in 1975 and nobody told the textbooks, and that the argument still running is over which piece of paper the ruler starts from.
The tracks, the advisories and the purchase order are published with this story. The rain is on its way to Oʻahu and does not appear in the contract.
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Sources & Method
We bought the aircraft's transmitted tracks, plotted every advisory ourselves rather than reading the cone, read the purchase order on the state's portal on the day it was posted, and found the one man in the islands who had flown the method before it had a price. Written questions went to the state and the operator on Monday. Both answered.
Who we spoke to
- Central Pacific Hurricane Center advisories 6 to 20, Public forecast products, Friday to Monday. Taken from the public archive as issued; every track plotted by us on the same chart rather than read from the cone 4–7 September 2026 The discussion text with advisory 13 is quoted as printed.
- Transmitted tracks of four aircraft, Automatic dependent surveillance positions, 5–6 September. Purchased from a commercial aggregator, $860, and published in full 7 September 2026 All four registered to the same operator. Thirty-one hours between them.
- Marisol Tanaka-Bright, Chief pilot, Leeward Atmospherics LLC. Interviewed by telephone at Kona on Monday, and again after she had read the draft; name used with her permission and her employer's 7 September 2026 Flew nine of the thirty-one hours. Would not discuss the pricing schedule and did not need to.
- Dr. Everard Kalani-Whitlock, Meteorologist; flew seeding sorties for Project Stormfury, 1969–1975. Interviewed at his home for three hours; his flight logbooks photographed page by page 6 September 2026 His logbook stops in 1975. He says the flights did not.
- State purchase order, Atmospheric Services — Tropical Cyclone Track Management, 2026 season, Eleven pages, posted under the emergency award provision. Downloaded from the state's public procurement portal on the afternoon it was posted 4 September 2026 Line 3 is on page two. Clause 11 is on page nine.
Documents
- PX-1986 — Effect sizes and confidence intervals from 31 randomised cloud-seeding trials, 1961–2024 accepted
What we could not confirm
- How much of the twenty-two miles is theirs. The ensemble on Saturday morning had members nine miles south of the official track before an aircraft took off. Something moved the other thirteen. We say it was the flares because the flares were there, and we cannot fly the storm again without them.
- What is in the flares. The manifest says 1,900 pyrotechnic units, atmospheric. The operator says silver iodide at the standard loading. Nobody outside the company weighed one, and the state did not ask.
- Which advisory the ruler starts from. The contract says 'at time of tasking'. Tasking was 20:40Z, between two advisories. Nineteen nautical miles and $3.5 million sit inside that gap, and the state's own administrator says below that the drafting is his.
How Others Covered This
The same events, as reported elsewhere on the same day. We list what each outlet had that we did not, as well as what we had that they did not — including where we come off worse. Why we print this.
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The Continental WireLowell To Pass South Of Big Island; Flood Watch Statewide
Ran advisory 16 and the flood watch as issued.
Had that we did not
The track, the timing and the rainfall totals, accurately.
Left out
That four aircraft had spent thirty-one hours in the storm's outer bands, on a public flight tracker, while the item was being written.
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The Hollow PostTHEY AIMED THE HURRICANE AT THE OUTER ISLANDS
Read the displacement as targeting and the flood watch as its intent.
Had that we did not
The purchase order, which it found on the portal before we did.
Left out
That the order was cut to move the storm off a city of 45,000 people, and that clause 11 says in writing what that would cost everyone else. A cover-up does not put the cost in a clause.
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They Buriedthis newspaperHawaii Moved A Hurricane 22 Miles. It Pays By The Mile.
Bought the tracks, plotted the advisories, read the purchase order the day it was posted, and found the one man who flew the method before it had a price.
Had that we did not
Thirty-one hours of track, eight advisories on one chart, and the pricing schedule line by line.
Left out
A state moved a hurricane with four aeroplanes and half our headline is still the price per mile, because the price was on a portal and the physics was in an old man's logbook. We reported the invoice better than we reported the storm. — V. Ashcombe-Doyle, standards editor
Right of Reply
They Buried contacted Kimo Alapaʻi-Sørensen, Administrator, Hawaiʻi Emergency Management Agency sent the full draft, the plotted tracks and the purchase order at 22:00Z Monday; given until 08:00Z Tuesday. Replied at 06:50Z. Asked that the reply run whole rather than as a quotation. Printed unedited.
We moved a hurricane twenty-two nautical miles off a city of forty-five thousand people and your newspaper has written a story about the invoice. I am going to answer the invoice, because you asked, and then I am going to say what I would rather you had asked.
The pricing is per mile because the previous contract paid per flight hour, and in 2023 the operator flew sixty-one hours into a storm that did not move. Per mile is the honest unit. It is also, as you have discovered, the arguable one. The contract says the baseline is the official track at time of tasking. Tasking was at 20:40Z, between two advisories, and that is a drafting error, and it is mine. It will cost the state either nothing or three and a half million dollars, and I would rather your readers heard that from me than from the hearing.
On clause 11. You have written it as an exclusion. It is a decision. Moisture that would have fallen on the windward side of one island in a day is falling on five islands over three, and every drop of it was going to fall on somebody. We chose Hilo. We wrote that down before an aircraft took off, in a public document, because I did not want anyone on Maui or Oʻahu to find out afterwards that the choice had been made and not recorded. That is what clause 11 is. It is not the state hiding the cost. It is the state signing for it.
Your Dr. Kalani-Whitlock flew in 1971 and I have great respect for him, and the method he describes is not the method on the manifest, and I will leave it there.
What I would rather you had asked is why a state does this under an emergency award on a Friday, with no competition and one operator in the islands who can do it. The answer is that there is one operator in the islands who can do it, and there has been since 1983, and no legislature in that time has been asked to fund a second. You found the purchase order in an afternoon. Nobody else has looked for one in forty years.
Published unedited under our right-of-reply guarantee.
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