Days after slamming the Hawaiian Islands, Hurricane Lala has roared back to Category 3 intensity and is now barreling toward the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, a vast protected stretch of Pacific Ocean that also holds the hallowed ground of the Battle of Midway.
The National Hurricane Center issued a Hurricane Watch on Tuesday stretching from Lisianski Island to Maro Reef, warning that Lala's sustained winds have climbed back to 125 mph. The storm had weakened after striking Hawaii but found warmer waters to its west, and atmospheric conditions helped it restrengthen rapidly. Forecasters expect Lala to remain a hurricane for the next several days as it pushes deeper into the central Pacific.
The storm's track puts it on a collision course with the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, which covers more than 582,000 square miles of ocean, one of the largest marine conservation areas on Earth. A Category 3 hurricane churning through those waters poses a direct threat to the fragile coral reefs, seabird colonies, and marine ecosystems the monument was created to protect.
Lala's westward march also puts Midway Island in its crosshairs. The island sits almost directly between the United States and Japan, and it is home to the Battle of Midway National Monument, a site administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission that honors one of the most consequential naval engagements in American history.
The Battle of Midway, fought June 3, 6, 1942, came just six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The engagement pitted U.S. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz against Imperial Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in a contest that would determine the balance of power in the Pacific theater for the rest of the war.
The same storm system that first tracked toward Hawaii as a potential tropical cyclone has now grown into a full-blown hurricane threatening the very waters where that battle was fought.
Japan opened the fight with a diversionary attack on the Aleutian Islands. On June 3, a group of B-17 Flying Fortress Bombers flew from Midway to strike what they believed was the main Japanese fleet, stationed roughly 600 miles to the west. The attack failed to hit its targets, but it marked the first military engagement of the battle, according to History.com.
The following day, Japanese forces launched 108 warplanes from four aircraft carriers against the U.S. base on Midway. The assault left the base heavily damaged but still operational, a detail that proved decisive. On June 4, U.S. carrier-launched bombers struck back, setting three Japanese carriers ablaze. Japan responded with two waves of attacks against the USS Yorktown using its remaining carrier, the Hiryu, hitting the Yorktown with three bombs. American dive bombers then destroyed the Hiryu, eliminating Japan's last carrier in the fight.
By June 5, the Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu had all been sunk. Japanese forces retreated on June 6, ending the battle. Japan lost as many as 3,000 men, 300 aircraft, one heavy cruiser, and all four carriers. The United States lost two ships, the carriers Yorktown and Hammann, along with 145 aircraft and around 360 servicemen.
The Akagi alone had a long and storied service life. Its keel was laid at the Kure shipyard, and it was finished as a carrier on March 25, 1927. The ship was modernized in 1938 and photographed off Osaka as early as October 15, 1934. By the time it went down at Midway, it was one of the most experienced warships in the Imperial Japanese Navy.
The U.S. victory at Midway is widely regarded as the turning point of the Pacific war. The monument that now stands on the island preserves that history, and a Category 3 hurricane bearing down on it is no small matter for the site's physical structures and surrounding environment.
Lala's restrengthening fits a broader pattern this season. El Niño conditions have fueled a surge of tropical activity across the Eastern Pacific, producing one powerful storm after another. The season has already seen storms rapidly intensify in ways that have tested forecasters and strained emergency preparedness across the region.
The FOX Forecast Center continues to monitor the Pacific, and the NHC flagged two additional areas to watch off the coast of Mexico, though details on those disturbances remain limited. A separate distant disturbance could potentially put Hawaii back on alert, though that threat remains far from certain.
For now, the immediate concern is what Lala does to the waters and islands in its path. The Papahanaumokuakea monument is remote, far from population centers and far from the kind of rapid emergency response that mainland communities can marshal. This Pacific season has already produced a Category 5 storm, and Lala's resurgence shows the basin is far from done.
The Hurricane Watch zone, Lisianski Island to Maro Reef, covers a stretch of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands chain that is largely uninhabited by people but rich in wildlife. Monk seals, green sea turtles, and millions of nesting seabirds depend on these atolls and reefs. A major hurricane can reshape shallow reef structures, destroy nesting habitat, and churn up debris across vast stretches of ocean.
The disturbance that eventually became Lala was tracked weeks ago as Invest 93C, when forecasters first flagged it as a potential threat to Hawaii. That it has now passed the islands and regained major hurricane strength on the other side only underscores how unpredictable and persistent these Pacific systems can be.
The NHC has not yet detailed specific damage from Lala's initial pass through the Hawaiian Islands, and no casualty figures have been released. What is clear is that the storm refused to fade. It found fuel in the warm central Pacific and rebuilt itself into a serious threat, this time aimed at a place with no residents to evacuate, but with irreplaceable natural and historic value.
El Niño's grip on the Pacific has made this kind of restrengthening more likely, and the season still has months to run.
Nature does not check the calendar or the map before it sends a Category 3 hurricane through a war memorial and a wildlife sanctuary, but the people responsible for protecting both had better be paying attention.
