If you’ve never hiked on the Waianae Range in West Oahu you gotta check it out. You may have heard of two hikes on this range: Ka’ala (highest peak on the island) and Kalena (knife edge ridges). But, there’s a lesser known trail called Pu’u Hapapa that we found to be super fun. I learned about Pu’u Hapapa from Kaleo’s “Island Trails” blog. He’s done a few different variations of the trail had great things to say about it. It turns out that Cory has done this trail too and offered to show us the way.

We went up a ridge that has two notches and came back down the same way. The hike is relatively short (at around 4 miles round trip) and offers beautiful views of the entire island. It’s would be a great introduction to the Waianae Range. I really really like this hike. Like, really.

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It was a dark and stormy evening.

These guys were were paddling with urgency.

I wouldn’t want to be in the water with this happening above me either.

The skies over the islands were alive.

Waikiki appeared to be under attack. In a beautiful sort of way.

Yet at times, the light bursts made the the city look serene.

The day started off sunny and warm. But at around 3:30 in the afternoon a small but mighty thunder storm hit the islands. It brought heavy rain and a ton of lightning. We even had water spouts (tornadoes over water) popping up over Ala Moana. The storm has passed now and hopefully tomorrow will be a beautiful beach day. I’ll be stuck in the office but I have a couple friends in town on vacation and I hope they get to enjoy the day.

Facebook and Twitter have been abuzz with pics from the storm. I managed to get a few okay shots but some of our local photogs (with way more talent than me) snapped some really amazing pics.

See some incredible photos here:

• Lightning photos from Quarkcsj (on Flickr).
• Chasing Lightning by Dallas Nagata.
• Amazing Pictures of Tornados in Hawaii (on Buzzfeed).