Surf in Hawai'i

The Associated Press has an article about surfers riding it out:

As the first tropical storm to hit Hawai'i in over twenty years passed by the islands, some coffee farmers on the Big Island began navigating flooded roads to assess damage to their crops, while tourists wandered the beaches of Oahu and surfers took to the waves despite driving rain and wind.
Tropical Storm Iselle knocked out power, caused flooding and downed trees when it crossed onto the Big Island. There have been no reports of deaths or major injuries, Governor Neil Abercrombie hassaid.
About twenty thousand homes remained without power on the Big Island, where the main part of Iselle came ashore in a rural and sparsely populated region, Hawaii County Civil Defense spokesman John Drummond said.
Those staying in shelters were told to return home, while crews cleared trees from roads, county spokesman Kevin Dayton said. The state Department of Health warned the public to stay out of floodwaters and storm water runoff across Hawai'i because they are known to attract sharks as they wash possible dead animals into the ocean.
Heavy rains and wind from the storm’s outer bands also hit Maui and Oahu as Iselle moved west, but south of the other islands, out to sea. Abercrombie stressed that even though the brunt of storm hit the Big Island and Maui, Kauai and Oahu need to remain vigilant. “We won’t be able to give all-clear until late this afternoon or early evening,” Abercrombie said.
Honolulu’s lifeguard division said about a dozen surfers were riding waves at a spot nicknamed Suicides, near the popular Diamond Head crater. Lifeguards on Oahu were planning to only respond to emergency calls, avoiding regular patrols.
Back on the Big Island, coffee farmers on the southeastern side tried to get around fallen trees on flooded roads to determine any crop damage, said Randy Stevens, general manager of Kau Coffee Mill. “It’s raining so hard, we’re just trying to get the roads opened up so we can get to the fields,” Stevens said.
The heavy rain and flooding seen in the southeastern Kau district is vastly different from the relatively drier Kona region on the Big Island’s western side, where much more coffee is grown, and the storm had little impact. “We’re all buttoned up, but nothing happened,” said Bruce Corker, a Kona coffee farmer.
Meanwhile, Hurricane Julio, some nine hundred miles behind in the Pacific, was downgraded to a Category 2 storm and packed maximum sustained winds of about a hundred miles an hour. National Weather Service officials predict it will continue to weaken on a path that should take it about two hundred miles north of the island chain.
If Julio stays on track, “the impacts to the islands would be minimal,” Weather Service meteorologist Derek Wroe said. “We would see some large surf. We could see some heavy showers. That’s all assuming this track holds. Otherwise, we could still see some tropical storm conditions.” There remains uncertainty given its distance from land. “We’re not out of the woods yet with Julio,” Wroe said.
Iselle also had weakened, having been downgraded to a tropical storm about fifty miles from shore and, within hours, its winds slowed to sixty miles an hour, well below the seventy-four mile per hour threshold for a hurricane. Experts said wind shear chopping at the system and the Big Island’s mountainous terrain helped weaken the storm.
Hawai'i has been directly hit by hurricanes or tropical storms only three times since 1950. The last time was in 1992, when Hurricane Iniki killed six people and destroyed more than fourteen hundred homes in Kauai.
The state prepared for the back-to-back storms by closing government offices, schools and transit services across Hawai'i. But the primary elections, including congressional and gubernatorial races, will go forward as planned.
Travelers faced disrupted plans several airlines canceled dozens of flights, the Hawai'i Tourism Authority said. Some airlines waived reservation change fees and fare differences for passengers who needed to alter their plans.
The storms are rare in Hawai'i, but not unexpected in El Nino years, a change in ocean temperature that affects weather around the world. Ahead of this year’s hurricane season, weather officials warned the wide swath of the Pacific Ocean that includes Hawai'i could see four to seven tropical storms this year.

Rico says he's only bodysurfed in Hawai'i (in much smaller waves), damn near drowned, and it wasn't even a hurricane...