(Bloomberg) — Hawaii escaped its first hurricane strike in 22 years as Iselle was downgraded to a tropical storm just before making landfall at the Big Island.

The center of Iselle went ashore about five miles (8 kilometers) east of Pahala, Hawaii, with top winds of 60 miles per hour, at 2:30 a.m. local time, the National Weather Service said. Iselle, traveling west, was previously a Category 1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.

The system, which grounded flights, shut tourist areas and closed government offices, would have been the first hurricane on record to strike the Big Island, according to Commodity Weather Group LLC. Hurricane Iniki was the last hurricane to hit the state, landing as a Category 4 storm in September 1992, killing six and causing $2 billion in damage, Jeff Masters, founder of Weather Underground, wrote in his blog.

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