If you thought the flooding devastation of Hurricane Harvey was a freak occurrence that couldn’t happen here, you would be wrong.

The fact is something like it did happen here 67 years ago.

Hurricane Hiki dumped more than 52 inches of rain on the west side of Kauai during a furious four-day period in August 1950, setting a U.S. record for an extreme rainfall event that was still intact as of Tuesday.

In Texas the National Weather Service on Tuesday reported that Harvey has so far poured 51.88 inches of rain near Cedar Bayou, a channel separating barrier islands south of Houston.

Hurricane Hiki, which did not make landfall, but hovered near the Kauai coast for days, brought torrential rain that caused the Waimea River to overtop and flood the entire town of Waimea.

No lives were lost, but more than 200 people were evacuated from the rural community, and property damage reached an estimated $200,000 — more than $2 million in today’s dollars.

Angry residents met with authorities a week later to demand better flood control measures in the flood-prone region, according to archives of the Garden Island newspaper.

Allan Smith of Kekaha was 5 years old at the time, but he remembers his parents and grandparents talking about the powerful rain and big flood.

“The revetment, or levee, that is there now wasn’t there then, and it flooded the entire valley,” Smith said.

Smith, now board chairman of the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative, said the violent storm destroyed a bridge and that waterlogged residents had to be ferried across the river. A powerhouse in Waimea Canyon was also demolished and had to be relocated.

The first tropical cyclone to affect the Hawaiian Islands in nearly five decades is described in a 1952 U.S. Geological Survey report, prepared in cooperation with the Territory of Hawaii, and another report in the Central Pacific Hurricane Center archives.

The storm was first detected on charts at Honolulu Airport during the night of Aug. 12, and it was eventually designated alphabetically as Able, or, in the Hawaiian language, Hiki.

The storm was east of Hilo on Aug. 14, but it intensified over the next 24 hours to reach hurricane force — though it remained relatively small with gale-force winds extending outward less than 150 miles.

Hiki marched northwest on a course parallel to the windward coasts of Hawaii island, Maui, Molokai, Oahu and Kauai 100 to 200 miles offshore.

But the northwest movement of the hurricane stalled Aug. 17 just north of Kauai as a high-pressure ridge developed west of the islands. During the following 24 hours, the hurricane slowly turned to the southwest in a course around the west side of the Garden Island.

“At this stage aircraft reconnaissance reported winds up to 90 miles per hour just south of the storm center, and it became necessary to alert the populations of Kauai and Oahu against possible loop movement of the hurricane, which would have carried it east and northeastward through the Kauai channel,” the Central Pacific Hurricane Center report said.

Hiki caused relatively little wind damage, although Kauai’s Kilauea Lighthouse recorded gusts of 68 mph, the roofs of several houses were blown away and the unbraced walls of one home under construction were knocked down. A farmer died in Kohala on the Big Island when he contacted a live wire blown down by strong wind.

On Kauai the rain gauges in the area of greatest rainfall were read at bimonthly intervals. “Fortunately, however, the gauges were read a short time before the storm,” the U.S. Geological Service report said. “Thus the amount read after the hurricane could all be attributed to the precipitation due to the storm.”

A total of 52.34 inches of rain was measured at the Kanalo Huluhulu Ranger Station at Kokee between noon Aug. 14 and noon Aug. 18.

But it could have been even more.

The gauge, with a capacity of 24 inches, was emptied at noon Aug. 15 only to be found overflowing at 8 a.m. the next day.

“A rubble wall along the right bank of Waimea River just below the mouth of Makaweli River, constructed to contain the flow, was overtopped and the entire town of Waimea was flooded,” the USGS report said.

“The streets of Waimea were flooded not long before midnight of the 15th, and again early in the morning of the 17th. The Kekaha powerhouse was severely damaged by flooding on the 17th, and hundreds of acres of sugar cane land were covered by water,” the report said.