One Year After Harvey's Record Rain, Hurricane Lane Sets Preliminary Hawaii Tropical Cyclone Rainfall Record

Hurricane Lane dumped more rain on Hawaii than any other tropical cyclone on record just one year after Harvey set the tropical cyclone rainfall record for the entire United States.

"The Mountain View gage has measured 52.02 inches of rain for the period from 8 a.m. HST Aug. 22, when the outer rainbands started impacting the Big Island, through 8 a.m. HST Aug. 26 after the trailing rainband passed west of South Point," the National Weather Service in Honolulu said in a public information statement Monday.

Mountain View is located in the higher elevations of the Big Island at an elevation of about 1,600 feet above sea level.

Another way to look at the Mountain View rainfall total is that it's equivalent to about 50 trillion gallons of water over a four-day period.

(MORE: Lane Fell Apart as it Approached Hawaii. What Happened?)

The NWS is investigating an unverified private weather station, which reported 58.8 inches of rain during the same time period.

Regardless, both rainfall totals indicate Lane broke the Hawaii tropical cyclone rainfall record, previously 52 inches at Kanalohuluhulu Ranger Station during Hurricane Hiki in 1950.

(MORE: 'We've Never Forecast This Much Before')

But there was one key difference between the prolific rainfalls from Lane and Harvey.

Lane's peak rain totals were largely orographically driven, meaning the storm's moisture was forced up the mountains of the Big Island, which enhances the precipitation on the windward side of the mountains. If the high terrain wasn't present, the totals would have been smaller.

Texas sits in the southern Plains with no rapid rises in elevation, but Harvey still managed to produce more than 60 inches of rain because it stalled over the state for multiple days. In fact, Nederland, Texas, sits at just 16 feet above sea level.

"Harvey is simply in another galaxy from Lane," said weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman.

Lane never made landfall in Hawaii, passing more than 100 miles south of the island chain at its closest approach late last Friday into early Saturday.

Although the heavy rain from Lane produced significant flooding and landslides on the Big Island, impacts from strong winds and storm surge could have been much worse across the island chain had Lane not fallen apart quickly and, instead, tracked closer to Hawaii.