I am not buying the official explanation. Dry conditions ? It’s an island in the middle of the ocean surrounded by warm water.
Hmmm....isn’t humid, too?
Look at the photos. This from a “wildfire” in a hot humid tropical island ?
Leeward (western) side is dry in that it sees little rainfall.
Recent exceedingly low-humidity has been unusual.
A high pressure system to the north was gently rotating clockwise and the full-blown hurricane well to the south was nevertheless rotating counterclockwise, turbocharging the normal wind pattern (generally west as mentioned) for the Hawaiian Islands squeezed in between these two separate weather events.
A small earlier wildfire of dry wild grass somewhat up the mountain slope was said earlier in the day to have been contained 100 percent, causing some local residents to breathe easy and perhaps lower their guard. But something went ***spark*** a little farther south above town, then screaming straight line winds (upwards of 80mph) seems to have taken that initial flame and created a literal firestorm almost instantaneously.
Lahaina is on the leeward side of Maui, so the climate is much dryer than the windward side, only a few miles away. This is typical of Hawaii. On Oahu, the land around Makaha Beach resembles a desert, but Kaneohe, 40 miles to the east, gets constant rain.
"Dry conditions ?"
Islands were caught between large LOW pressure area and a large HIGH pressure area (the storm) to the North and South of HI, respectively. The two weather systems created a vortex of very high winds that caused the rapid spread of fires from East to West.