Still recovering from Hurricane Lala, Hawaii prepares for a possible weekend cyclone

HONOLULU (AP) — Communities still recovering from last weekend’s hurricane in Hawaii could get pounded again in coming days from another tropical system gaining strength over warm Pacific waters.

Hurricane Lala tore roofs off houses, uprooted trees, covered roads in mud and rocks and left many households without electricity. With thousands of homes and businesses still in the dark Thursday, forecasters warned yet another tropical cyclone is likely to approach the islands soon.

“We’re worried about people going through this again,” said John Bravender, a warning coordinator meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Honolulu. “Normally we would say pay attention to the forecast just in case. Now we’re saying take action now.”

He said a tropical depression was just starting to become more organized, and while the system is not expected to take exactly the same track or even dump potentially as much rain as Lala, the ground is already saturated from the recent hurricane.

The depression moving west and northwest could become a tropical storm in the coming hours and pass near or south of Hawaii’s Big Island over the weekend or early next week, the U.S. Central Pacific Hurricane Center said. That system could dump up ...